


JFK, Again

by Mime_Paradox



Category: Alias (TV), Nikita (TV 2010), Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Anthology Fic, Canon Compliant, Canon Welding, Everyone Reacts Fic, Gen, Multi, Polyamory, Where are they now? Fic, continuity porn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2018-09-19 18:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 54,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9453605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mime_Paradox/pseuds/Mime_Paradox
Summary: Kathleen Spencer, forty-fifth President of the United States, has been murdered inside the Oval Office by a single female assassin, now at large. As details of the assassination trickle out, people are forced to consider what this means for them and the world. Note: for purposes of this fic, the events ofNikita3.22: "Till Death Do Us Part" take place betweenPerson of Interestepisode 2.19, "Trojan Horse" and episode 2.21, "Zero Day".





	1. Control

**U.S. Capitol, District of Columbia  
**

**Twenty-two hours after the assassination of President Kathleen Spencer  
**

 

Senator Ed Chappell looked old—decades older than he had the last time she’d seen him. And he wasn’t the only one; Control would be surprised if he and the fifteen other senators who comprised the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs had gotten a collective five hours of sleep since the news had broken the day before. She imagined that, like the Pentagon, the Capitol had been in a frenzy all day. Not that this made her predisposed to empathize with them: Control had never liked the Senate, and being told, eighteen hours into her people’s investigation on President Spencer’s murder, to interrupt the work that actually mattered in order to endure hours of pointless questioning, innuendo, and barely concealed contempt made her like it either less.  

“I don’t know about you all, but I am scared.” proclaimed Chappell, as part of his opening remarks. “I know I’m not supposed to say that, but I am. These last twelve months have been unprecedented: for only the second time in our nation’s history, a president has resigned. A C.I.A. Director was assassinated. Terrorists have threatened citizens on live television. Even with all of that, I’d expected yesterday to wake up in the world I’d left behind.  Instead, I find that the most secure person in the world has been killed, which means that really, none of us are safe.

“Still, as public officials, we cannot just crawl under our beds; not after voters entrusted us to help them.  So today we’re here to find out just how this multi-billion dollar web we’ve kludged together to keep us safe could so completely and utterly fail us.” As Chappell went on, Control struggled not to turn to her phone to see what progress Ops had made. While perfectly capable of operating without her direct supervision, the situation was irregular enough and far too fluid for her to feel comfortable not being part of it. Unfortunately, it made for very bad optics for her not to seem interested in her official reprimand. 

“Which brings us to Classified Program Northern Lights,” Control heard, causing her attention to return to the hearing. “Now, I’m not privy to the operational details of this project, but I understand that, essentially, it analyzes the impossible amounts of intelligence we now collect in order to sort the wheat from the chaff and identify threats and stop terrorism before it can be carried out—in short, its job is to prevent precisely what occurred yesterday from happening. So as you may suspect, we have questions.

“Now, my colleague and friend from the Intelligence Committee, Ross Garrison, who is probably the Senator most informed about the way the program operates, assures me of Northern Light’s soundness and effectiveness. Reports on the program state that since its inception it has successfully stopped 98% of planned terrorist attacks on our soil, which certainly _sounds_ impressive, if you don’t consider what that remaining 2% comprises.

“It's the nature of the beast that nobody hears about the times when terrorist attacks don’t occur. We’ve all heard about the times they do. The New York ferry bombing. The attack on Langley two years ago. The Gates House attack. The assassinations of Senator Madeline Pierce and C.I.A. Director Morgan Kendrick. The Crimson Resistance.  Whatever its success rate, Northern Lights also seems to be consistently incapable of protecting our public servants, so I’ll have to ask Senator Garrison to forgive me for not being able to take him at his word.  That the project could—forgive my French—fuck up so badly and be unable to predict the assassination of the President seems less like a fluke and more like par for the course. ”

Normally, Control would consider this all part of the script: Regardless of what was said or the sincerity behind it, the fact remained that nothing or no one was going to improve on a 98% success rate, and nobody had any illusions that Control’s position was anything less than perfectly secure. And so, her ostensible superiors grilled her, getting to sound tough in the process, while she pretended to be duly chastised.  Then they would all go about their business, changing nothing in the process: it was called accountability.

And yet the fact remained that Chappell was right. Even if she and her people had, by any conceivable standards, done everything they could given the information at their disposal, they should have been able to identify and stop each and every one of the threats he'd mentioned. Sure, when Nathan Ingram sold Alicia Corwyn on his Machine’s infallibility, he’d meant that it would identify the correct intelligence all the time and not that it would identify all the correct intelligence, but still, if it couldn’t identify an assassin intent of killing the single most relevant person in the country, then there was something seriously wrong, and the senator had every right to be angry. 

The truth was that the past few years had exposed several weaknesses in Research, or perhaps, if Control was being especially honest, Northern Lights itself. Ingram’s Machine disclosed threats or (never _and_ ) targets. This made it most useful when it came to people attempting to stage the next 9/11, who needed specific, specialized tools and opportunities in order to be able to carry out their plans, which could then be tracked easily enough, given enough eyes and ears.  It was considerably less useful when dealing with something like the Crimson Resistance, which chose its targets randomly and required nothing more complex than automatic weaponry and a vehicle which with to move. The Machine had provided the Resistance’s numbers (notably, only after it had first attacked and made its first address) and was presumably tracking its members’ movements, but unable to share the intel, it had left Control’s people tracking ghosts.  The same had occurred with Senator Pierce’s assassination. Research had coughed up a number that was eventually tied to the murder, but only by default. With no connection between the prison escapee Brandt and the Senator, there had been no trail to follow until the very end.

Additionally, while the Machine had a bias towards identifying threats, sometimes it would cough up a target, which presented its own problems. Usually, if a single person’s life was relevant to national security, he or she was also presumed to be under constant threat, and chatter surrounding attempts on their lives was monitored and flagged as a matter of course. This has been the case with Kendrick. With no available intel besides the fact that his life was in danger, there was little Control could do but to take the in-retrospect insufficient measure of sending in Crimson Six to monitor the situation from a distance. Similarly, even if they hadn’t obtained the president's number ten hours before her death, without additional information, Research’s warning would have been more or less useless. There was little that could be done that wasn’t already being done, without raising questions that couldn’t be answered.

Senator Chappell was winding down. “Our first witness, already introduced, is Northern Light’s Head of Operations, operationally known as Control.” Then, at her: “Welcome, and thank you for your time. Do you solemnly affirm that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, under pains and penalties of perjury?” His tone was not particularly welcoming.

 

*             *             *

When Control finally arrived back at ops, three hours later, the chamber looked as she’d left it, with her analysts scrambling, despite the creeping collective exhaustion, to collect and organize the data still arriving on a minute-by-minute basis, while her operation staff coordinated with the agents on the field.  To the untrained eye, it looked like chaos, but it was that seeming disorder that kept the country safe.

Most of the time.

“How was the Senate, ma’am?” Schiffman asked, upon seeing her superior arrive. “Sorry, that was a stupid question.” Working since the news broke, her aide’s alertness was almost certainly chemical in origin. 

“Any updates?”

“Not really—things are strangely normal, considering. We’re awaiting your input on a set of new numbers—they don’t seem to be connected to Nikita. _She_ ’s still nowhere to be found. I’ve also received word from Special Counsel: the F.B.I. is taking point on the Spencer investigation, and we’re supposed to hand over all of our intel and abort all active on-books operations relating to it—he said to tell you that exactly.”

“Message received. Thank you.” Not at all unexpected: even if Northern Lights weren’t due some retribution for its magnificent fuck-up, her agency was, by its nature, designed to be forward-looking, and to deal with what would happen and who’d do it, rather than why and how things had happened. And with Nikita somehow invisible to all but a handful of the Machine’s ten thousand eyes, finding her would require human intelligence of the sort her unit wasn’t designed to provide.  Still, it was a disappointment: not only was Nikita their mess to clean up, Control was convinced the assassin was the single thread connecting most of Northern Light’s recent failures, which meant finding her was key to understanding not  only the Machine selective blindness, but also why these attacks were happening in the first place.

Nikita Mears had first arrived on Control’s radar after the attack on C.I.A. H.Q. two years earlier, which had involved a nerve agent smuggled into Langley inside a hard drive. Arriving as a walk-on, she’d demanded access to the seventh floor SCIF Room where the drive, believed to contain intel on a terror attack called Operation Sparrow, was being decrypted; instead, she was escorted to a holding room, where she reportedly killed three staffers before going off on her own to fire several shots inside the headquarters; prevent the nerve agent from killing anyone; and later escape both custody and the facility.  All of this was unprecedented enough, but it was made more so by the fact that the Machine had at no point flagged her.

(Also not flagged: Ryan Fletcher, the C.I.A. analyst who’d produced the hard drive in the first place, tying it and Operation Sparrow to a paramilitary group with government connections called Division. While arrested for aiding and abetting Nikita’s escape, there had been no indication that he knew anything about the nerve gas, or that he had operated under anything other than good faith.)

It’d be months before Nikita would resurface, this time in connection with the Gates House murders.  On their own, the deaths of USSOUTHCOM Commander Bruce Winnick, White House advisor Phillip Ramsey, former C.I.A. Deputy N.C.S. Director Roger Trenton, and their security detail at the hands of terrorists would have been frustrating enough, but they had been made worse by the fact that Research had given out the V.I.P.s numbers (as well as the one belonging to Senator Madeline Pierce, the attack’s most high-profile survivor) and Control had chosen, based on the evidence, to work them as threats. Publicly, she admitted to having dropped the ball; privately, she hadn’t been so sure, and her suspicions became even more pronounced after Indigo Five, assigned to keep track on the Senator after the attack, reported seeing Pierce meet with Mears inside the Capitol.

While investigating Pierce eventually yielded results—Control had decided to confront the Senator directly, and succeeded in getting her to admit that the terrorism story had been a sham to protect her son Sean—Nikita’s trail once again went cold. She was nowhere to be seen when Senator Pierce herself was killed weeks later, and although there was evidence suggesting that she'd been involved when former Company man Percival Rose—whose number had come up the day of the attack on Langley—resurfaced to blow up a nuclear reactor and threaten the President with a fake Reagan-era satellite-mounted laser, her people had not been in a position to confirm or disprove it. Mears had, however, been present during the assassination of C.I.A. Director Kendrick: Control's people had spotted her and had been about to approach when Kendrick’s car exploded, after which she disappeared from sight.   

With Mears once again in the wind, Control had been left with a whole lot of pieces that almost, but not quite, added up to a complete picture.  Senator Pierce and the Gates House victims had met with a frequency that suggested something that looked a lot like conspiracy. The day of the C.I.A. attack, Rose had met with Pierce, Winnick, and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Edward Adams. Within fifteen months, all four would die in irregular circumstances—Pierce during a car bombing, Winnick at the Gates House attack, Adams of suicide after news broke of his role in the theft of billions in Iraq reconstruction money, and Rose during the government counteroffensive after his blackmail attempt. Another person tied to Madeline Pierce and the Gates House victims, hedge fund manager Jonathan Gaines, had also died under suspicious circumstances, the same day Ryan Fletcher was proclaimed dead after an altercation with a prison guard. All available evidence suggested that Pierce, Winnick, Trenton, and Ramsey had been flagged by Research because they represented a threat, but evidence of that threat had never materialized.  According to Senator Pierce, the “terrorists” responsible for the Gates House attack had actually been (unspecified) former comrades of her son’s, who had worked with him in the commission of (unspecified) illegal acts overseas, and who were now attempting to silence him: that the SEAL had later been tied to the murder of Director Merrick and linked to both a Russian sleeper agent inside the C.I.A. and to former Gogol director Ari Tasarov gave weight to that assertion. Nikita had prevented the death of one C.I.A. director, been present at the death of another, and had connections to Senator Pierce, connections to Rose, and the clout to get inside the White House without raising the eyebrows she should have raised.  And somewhere in the mix was Division, Rose’s instrument of choice and fortress, which, until it’s “dissolution” at the hands of the Marine Corps, had, she suspected, been involved in all of this more than she could conclusively prove. All of which led…nowhere in particular, really.

After the C.I.A. attack, Control had opened a file on Nikita. It had only ever been updated sporadically.  They’d learned soon enough that she’d been in the system, convicted and executed—allegedly—for killing a police officer in New Jersey; this trail led to her (scant) employment history  and the discovery that she’d been a foster child until her teens, when she’d run away to become a drug addict, in and out of halfway houses. Nothing in her history suggested the means or opportunity to fake her death, make the connections she had, or explained why Ingram’s Machine had never flagged her, almost as if it were protecting her. While time had only made finding her more vital—for one thing, she was one of the handful of people involved in any of these messes to still be alive—until yesterday, Control had more or less resigned herself to the assassin’s permanent role in Northern Light’s pantheon of ghosts, along with The Man in the Suit, his silent partner, and whoever had killed Denton Weeks and Alicia Corwyn. And now she’d killed the President, and Control wasn’t allowed to hunt for her. 

Still, Special Counsel had only forbidden her from having any people officially on the case. As much as she hated to have to ask for a favor, she was not about to let a thing like that—or proper procedure—stop her. After supervising the progress of the work on their latest number, she headed outside ops, and down the hall to a little-used office door labeled, simply, “Marcus Dixon”.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up Next: Chapter Two: "Jenny"  
> News of the president’s assassination has left most journalists struggling to stay afloat amidst the flood of new information. Jenny, on the other hand, has Jill Morelli. 
> 
> \----  
> Actual notes:
> 
> So as can probably be guessed from this, I'm a big fan of minutiae and canon compliance. I also love "Nikita" and "Person of Interest" and wanted to try my hand at writing a crossover, which raised an obvious complication: how does one square a world in which successful terrorist attacks and assassinations occur several times a year with one in which those cannot occur? And because I also love "Alias", that series came along for the ride.


	2. Jenny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> News of the president's assassination has left most journalists struggling to stay afloat amidst the flood of new information. Jenny, on the other hand, has Jill Morelli.

**The _Guardian_ _Post_ bullpen, New York City**

**Five hours after the assassination of President Kathleen Spencer**

“I need to talk to you,” Jill Morelli said. Her co-worker and often-partner’s voice sounded like both chainsaw and lullaby, after the night Jenny had been having.

“Is it about Spencer?” Jenny asked, not at all bothering to hide her annoyance. What was the point? “If it is, I don’t want to hear about it.”

“It is. Sorry,” Jill apologized, causing Jenny to sigh. It had been too much to ask for anyway. The president had been all everyone had been talking about since the news had broken of her assassination, so of course this is what this was about. For once, she half-wished she’d get assigned a rush piece on the Kardashians or dog walkers or anything, really, just for the chance to ease the buzzing on her head, and think about something else, like how much scarier the world had suddenly gotten.

“Okay, then. Just let me get some coffee and aspirin first.”

Four hours after the news had initially broken, the newsroom was still in a frenzy.  While the bulk of the story was being handled in D.C., where the assassination had taken place (how does a president get killed inside the Oval Office?) the editors had commandeered pretty much every single _Post_ staffer in the country and put them on the job of supplementing those efforts, be it by tapping local leads, obtaining people’s reactions, investigating the short-term effects of her death, analyzing her short-lived presidency and what it meant for the first female president to be killed while in office, keeping an eye on other news sources for updates and in general acting as if Kathleen Spencer had been the only person to ever live. Even the interns had been mobilized, and those that weren’t performing research were finding out just how vital it was to keep reporters properly caffeinated.  Those particular interns had gone above and beyond the call of duty: over in the kitchen, a selection of three of every kind of Starbucks item lay, in venti sizes, on the table.

“Oh, come to mama,” Jenny said, as she picked up a cup of Caramel Macchiato. It was just the way she liked it—small miracle, that—not scalding, but only just. “So what is it?” Jill looked genuinely frazzled, even for her, and even for today.

“I think I might have a scoop. The genuine article. A-make-your-career-even-in-the-middle-of-this-mess-opportunity.”

Had it been anyone else, Jenny would have been skeptical: given that absolutely everyone was on this story, the chances that any one person would discover something that hadn’t already been discovered by someone else were close to nonexistent. Jill, though, possessed both the dubious fortune of constantly being in the right (wrong) place at the right (wrong) time, and the experience to know of what she was talking about. If she said she had a scoop, she was worth listening to, particularly if she was coming to her and not the editor. 

“Did you see the released White House security camera footage?” Jill whispered unnecessarily. Jenny had not; she’d been busy spending the last hour on the phone with a friend of a friend of her husband’s who worked as a subcontractor for the NSA, trying to get him to get her farther up the intelligence food chain. “I’m 100 percent sure I know the assassin.”

Jenny was incredibly glad she hadn’t been gulping down her coffee when Jill had said that. What. 

Without a word, Jenny took Jill's arm and led the younger woman to the elevator, which she took down to the twelfth floor, previously occupied by a big-time law firm until its parent office closed them down after a merger the previous month; she was taking no chances at being overheard. The hallways was, as she’d hoped for, empty.  “Okay: what. How do you know the assassin? You mean you know who she is?”

“I’ve met her,” Jill said, still whisper-shouting for some reason. “Personally! She saved my life, three years ago. I don’t think she’s the assassin.”

In fits and starts, Jenny got the whole story. She’d heard parts of it before—Morelli’s expose on AirMerica’s cocaine-smuggling operation had been a big deal, when it happened—and it was interesting to now see the gaps filled, although she hadn’t expected anything this outlandish. According to Jill, the airline’s C.E.O. had contracted assassins to make her go away after she’d started poking around. The assassins then went on to eliminate the _Post_ ’s former editor Jeremy Holt and frame Morelli for the murder. She had just been taken captive when she was rescued by the president’s assassin—Jill wasn’t giving up the name yet—who then helped her report the truth and clear her name.  Although she’d refused to help her dig any deeper, Jill’s savior had admitted that the assassins were part of a group which had embedded itself in government institutions, the sort which would, if anyone did, have the sort of reach to kill a president. “I know it sounds insane, but I don’t think she killed the president. I think she’s being framed.”

It did sound unbelievable, except not. More than a decade ago, Will Tippin, a former co-worker and boyfriend back in her intern days in L.A., had attempted to prove that his best friend’s fiancé had been assassinated by a similar-sounding cabal.  Will had, after months, eventually broken the story of the group, which he’d called SD-6, mere days before he was found in a drug den, after which he’d admitted that a) he’d been a heroin addict for years, and b) he’d made the whole thing up. Although she hadn’t believed it for a second, she’d been in no position to do anything about it then; since then, she thought about him occasionally, and non-stop since the news about the president had broken. Wild, implausible conspiracies? Sure, she’d believe them.

If what Jill said was true—and Jenny was willing to believe the facts, if not the conclusions—then this was big. Unless something had changed in the last ten minutes—and it very well could have, the way the day was going—she really needed to get back to her desk—nobody had yet released the (alleged) assassin’s real name, possibly because nobody knew it yet. Jill's information, if correct placed the _Post_ at least one news cycle ahead of everyone else.

And if Jill was right and the assassin _wasn’t_ the assassin? It would mean that someone—the White House, Jill’s mercenaries, or someone else entirely—had worked very hard to make the world believe she was. The answers to the questions that raised could literally change the world—even more so than anything that had transpired in the past twenty-four hours.

“Why are you coming to me for? Shouldn’t you be telling Clark this?” Frederick Clark was their editor, and the person steering the newspaper through the storm and preventing it all from collapsing in the chaos. 

“That’s the thing. I’m not sure I should.” 

Jenny took a long sip of what remained of her coffee to prevent herself from saying anything rude. This was typical Jill. She was, despite her reputation as a conspiracy nut, one hell of a journalist, but she had a tendency to grow paralyzed whenever she got in over her head. She supposed she shouldn’t judge—she’d never had someone murdered in front of her because of a story she’d threatened to write—but still. “Why not?”

“Do you think he’ll believe me about her being framed? What if he just has us investigate the assassination, and all we do is hurt Nikita? _Shit_!“

Jenny made note of the slip—she’d have some investigating to do after she returned upstairs—but decided to say nothing. “You really believe she’s innocent, huh? You only knew her for what, two days? The odds she’s not involved are tiny—you know that, right?”

“So were the odds of her saving my life. She did that. I owe her,” Jill said, with surprising conviction. How loyal—and yet, how Jill. It wasn’t exactly a flattering comparison, but Jill had always reminded Jenny of a puppy, one she couldn’t bear to kick now when she was so at sea. “Look, I’m not saying she wasn’t involved,” she continued. “But maybe there’s more to the story. She would _not_ kill the president.”

So that was that. Time for a different approach. “Okay, so say she’s being framed. I still don’t we can get away with not telling Clark what we know. I mean, you have a name and her whereabouts three years ago. If we’re not the ones to release those, someone else will, if they haven’t already, and if you don’t tell your story now, then it will just be another conspiracy.  And what’s the worst case scenario if he tells us not to pursue the frame angle? We do it anyway and shove it in his face.”

“You’d do that?”

“I’m your partner. What kind of person would I be if I didn’t have your back?” Back when they’d first met, on her first day of work after she and her husband Joel had moved to New York for a fresh start, she hadn’t know what to make of Morelli, her star rising after her big exposé and yet looking for all the world like…well, like the conspiracy blogger she’d been most of her professional life. Still, Morelli had welcomed her into the newspaper with open arms, becoming an invaluable partner and even better friend. Even if Jill didn’t have an incredible nose for a story, Jenny would hate herself if she didn’t help. 

“Thank you,” Jill said, having moved in for a hug like the hugger she was. As she basked in the affection, Jenny noted, thankfully, that the few bits of the coffee left in her now overturned cup were spilling over the floor and not on their clothes. 

“Okay, so before we talk to Clark, I have to show you my Nikita file,” Jill said, after she’d released Jenny from her embrace.

“You have a file?” Of course she did. 

“Of course I do," Jill said with a smirk. "You think I’m going to let a gorgeous badass assassin tell me what to do? Come with me and I’ll show you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up Next: Chapter Three: "Sydney"  
> It’s been several years since Sydney Bristow has officially retired, and while the experience has mostly been puppies and grandmas, she does not feel as satisfied as she expected to feel. Fortunately, Dixon has arrived with a mission. 
> 
> \----   
> Actual notes:
> 
> Jenny is relatively minor recurring character from "Alias", who didn't get to do much more than what is recapped here; she's a supporting character for a supporting character and the most notable thing about her is that she was played by Sarah Shahi four seasons before Amy Acker went and became a regular in the series. Jill Morelli (Julie Gonzalo), meanwhile, appeared in "Nikita" episode 1.03, 'Kill Jill' and never again. Both characters were hella charming, and the fact that they both up and disappeared is one of the low-key disappointments of both series, and the fact that they're both journalists gave me a chance to bring them back.
> 
> Jill and Jenny's editor Frederick is named after Fred Clark, a former newspaperman who currently writes about Evangelical Christianity from a critical progressive perspective for his blog Slacktivist. His writing and the community that sprung up around it has changed my life, and should be totally checked out.


	3. Sydney

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been several years since Sydney Bristow has officially retired, and while the experience has mostly been puppies and grandmas, she does not feel as satisfied as she expected to feel. Fortunately, Dixon has arrived with a mission.

**Bristow residence, location unknown  
**

**Thirty hours after the assassination of President Kathleen Spencer**

She’d watched the news, along with everyone else in the world, and so she wasn’t at all surprised when Dixon appeared at her door. In fact, she’d been expecting it, and after an unexpected crying jag—she hadn’t even voted for the woman—she’d gone and prepared a bag with her essentials for the trip. After the greetings and the it’s been so longs, not completely marred by the circumstances, Sydney asked Vaughn to take Isabelle and Jack away for a walk around the beach while the two spies—one still active, one mostly retired—talked. 

“How could this happen?” Sydney asked, as she took a seat at her dinner table opposite her colleague of almost twenty years. Between them was a bottle of Dixon’s favorite wine, which they both dove into without gusto.

“We’re not sure yet,” Dixon said, with a casualness that falsely suggested that he was not, in  fact, breaking protocol and leaking classified information to unauthorized parties. “Normally, Research should have put us on her trail, or any assassins’, long before they’d made it anywhere near the White House. The only way it wouldn’t is if it had been a spur of the moment thing, which is impossible.” His hair had lost most of its color, Sydney noted; she wasn’t sure that had been the case when he’d last visited.

“Regular impossible? Or Rambaldi impossible?” Sydney asked. Not that she disbelieved Dixon, but they’d been proven wrong about such things enough times for her to give the word any weight.  

“Good point. In any case, I’m not really here to theorize about how or why it happened.”

“You want me to track her down. Q—Nikita. Capture her.”

A nod. “Alive, if possible. Dead, if necessary. I wouldn’t be coming to you if I didn’t think you stood the best chance out of anyone of achieving the first.” If it weren’t for particular circumstances, the comment would be more terrifying than flattering, given that Dixon officially employed some of the most skilled operatives in the country,

 Roughly five years had passed since Sydney had last seen, or even really thought about, the assassin she’d come to know as Q. During an operation in Brazil, A.P.O. had found evidence of a scheme to manipulate the country’s presidential elections with the help of a U.S.-backed mercenary group which she’d later come to know as Division. While investigating, she was contacted by Q, who had claimed to be one of their former agents and wished to help. Q had saved her life and later helped her on several occasions, including helping her recover a captured Dixon, all in exchange for information on a low-level Russian pimp called Vladimir Ivanov.

While she had been extremely helpful on the field, Q had also been taciturn, sharing very little about Division, and even less about herself. Sydney had been mostly left with impressions: Q was highly capable and intelligent, with superb tradecraft skills. She was a fantastic actress, and a natural when it came to compartmentalizing.  Despite a tendency to insist in having her own way—a tendency that felt exhausting in its familiarity—she could also work very well with others. She’d reminded Sydney of her father, which had made her feel sad for the younger agent. If anyone could plan and carry out an impromptu assassination of the President of the United States, she could.

Would she?  It didn’t seem likely. Could someone have coerced her? Improbable, but then, Sydney knew almost nothing about the woman. 

“So I do this. What assets do I have?”

“Two million in discretionary funds, wired to your regular account. A copy of all the intel we’ve collected. I’ve also called in Rachel to work with you in an off-books basis.”

“Oh! How is she?” Sydney said, allowing herself to become enthusiastic. She saw far too little of her friend and former protégé, and the opportunity to work with her was something she always relished, even in the absolute worst of circumstances.

“She’s fine. Meena is annoyed about me cutting her leave short, but she understands. And Rachel is excited to work with you again. Have you seen pictures of Grace?”

“Of course. She’s gorgeous,” Sydney said, feeling herself growing glum. She had upon first seeing her, instantly fallen for the baby, and had felt that the two women were the most fortunate in the world, after all the trouble they'd had. Now, all she could think about was how the world baby Grace and Isabelle and Jack and all of her other friends’ children would inherit was one that in many ways didn’t feel any better than hers had been. What had it all been for, then? Were they doomed to repeat the mistakes of their parents? Troubling, that, in her particular case.

“You know, I don't know if this makes sense, but I’ve been thinking of Isabelle, and how I’d explain all of this to her” said Sydney, after some deliberation. “I told her the president had died, and that we were sad because she’s our first woman president, but she’s been asking questions non-stop, and I don’t know what else to say. I mean, she’s only seven. How do I even begin?”

“Good question.” For a moment Sydney thought Dixon would leave it at that, until he continued: “You know, I was eight when Kennedy was killed. The principal at school announced it over the intercom, and our teacher, Mrs. Adams, she just broke down crying. And she wasn’t the only one. We were told classes would be cancelled, but that we would remain there until our parents came to pick us up.”

“Huh,” Sydney interjected. Dixon very rarely talked about his childhood. “That sounds…”

“Nerve-wracking. I think most of us—the kids—knew who the president was and that he was important, but not why. So you had all this entire building where most adults were just barely keeping it together, and none of us really understood why. It did a lot to shatter my perception of adults, let me tell you.  An uncle, Charlie, eventually picked me up and drove me home, where we had a bunch of neighbors and family just glued to the television.  And you have to understand, these were all Black folk: they all understood that Camelot wasn’t for them, and yet it still felt…I don’t want to say like family had died, but I’m not sure how else to say it.”

“And no one tried to explain to you, what it all meant?”

“People tried. My mother, she had no love for the man—she thought he’d compromised too much to bring the change we wanted—she was one of the ones who wasn’t a wreck, so it fell to her to try to keep the kids calm. The preacher, at church, that next Sunday, had this big homily about it. Teachers eventually talked about it, the next week. It wasn’t until King, though, years later, that I understood how they’d felt. It wasn’t the same—I think we were all bracing ourselves for him to be killed, at some point—but by then I was old enough to understand the enormity of it. So I guess what I’m getting at is that you and Vaughn shouldn’t sweat it—she’ll get it when the time comes.” Assuming, of course, that they were all still around in order for that to occur. Not a guarantee, depending on how the next few weeks went.  

“I don’t suppose Robin and Steven need much explaining,” she noted. She still thought of Dixon’s children as, well, children, even though they had long since left the nest. The alternative, thinking of them as adults, made her feel exceedingly old.

Dixon grinned. “Thankfully not. Although they both did call yesterday. No, that conversation came on 9/11. Not that I had any answers to give, back then. Turns out that’s one of the things clandestine operations doesn’t prepare you for.”

Sydney refilled her wineglass and took a gulp, wishing it actually helped. “Do you sometimes wonder if we did any good? Back with A.P.O. and the C.I.A.? Besides Sovogda and stopping Prophet Five, that last time?”

“I think you know the answer to that. Why do you ask?”

“I was just thinking. So we worked for SD-6 for years, fighting for the wrong side. But the thing is, looking back, I’m not sure I can say how they were making the world worse. And we took them down, eventually, but I can’t look at the world and say, yup, it’s sure improved now that the Alliance is gone. We beat Sloane, and Elena, and…and mom—and we had to go rogue to do that—and a few years later someone’s blackmailing the president.”  

“I’ve felt that way, sometimes. After Sloane killed Diane, I tried to convince myself that it would have all been better if you’d never told me the truth about SD-6.  And maybe you’re right, and we only ever do enough to keep the world from drowning. I think that’s enough. Listen, if you don’t want to do this mission—”

“That’s not what I meant. I **am** doing this mission.” Entire armies wouldn't stop her, now that she'd been asked. And maybe if she hadn't been. ”It’s just—I think I may have had a bit too much time to think.” And perhaps too much to drink, given the circumstances. Two glasses of wine was normally safely within her tolerance level, but today had not been normal day. 

“Okay, then. But listen. Maybe it's true that all we ever do is break even. That's enough, for me—it means Robin gets her chance to be a Marine like her old man, and that Steven gets to marry his boyfriend even though they’re both far too young and terrible for each other, and they both get their chance to make the world better. And when Isabelle and Jack grow up, they’ll have their shot too. And yes, sometimes we fail—sometimes badly, like yesterday. But we can’t do everything, and I don’t think it’s our job to try.”

Sydney wasn’t sure this was what she’d wanted to hear—this was a conversation she wasn’t sure she’d wanted to have in the first place—but still, she found she had nothing to say.  “I’m just scared, I guess. If this had happened five years ago, I’d have gone to ops and yelled at everyone and demanded that we do something. Now all I can do is watch and try to put on a brave face for Isabelle and Jack.”

“And that’s important too. But you know, Sydney, if you're unsatisfied with the way things are, I could try and pull some strings and find a place for you at the I.S.A. It’s good, important work, and we’d be lucky to have you. And hey”—his eyes sparkled with mischief—“you probably wouldn’t have to wear those impossible dresses you used to wear, back in the day.”

Sydney felt herself emitting a laugh, for once today unforced and untroubled. She _missed_ this. “Are you saying I’m too old to wear them?” she mocked, smiling. 

“I’m not saying anything,” Dixon said, feigning innocence. “You never have to ask if you look good, in my book. I’m just saying, you try wearing that blue dress from Moscow on a mission, and you’ll probably be getting a whole different kind of attention than you did back then.”

“Oh, shut your mouth! You are _terrible_.”

* * *

 

The next day, as she boarded the plane that would take her on the first leg of her trip to New Jersey, Sydney thought back to that conversation, not just because it had made her happy, but because it had allowed her to clear up some of the uncertainties she hadn’t known she’d been grappling with. As adrift and hopeless as the past day had made her feel, she had no real desire to go back to work officially. As much as she’d loved the job, she no longer had the patience for the bad parts—if indeed, she ever had—and as Dixon had mentioned, she was no longer twenty. While she could still perform the job—and indeed, both her parents had been regularly doing fieldwork all the way until their mid-fifties—she was no longer the person she had been back then. While she occasionally felt the pull of nostalgia, Dixon’s occasional missions more than helped scratch that particular itch. 

At the same time, Dixon had been right; she _was_ growing unsatisfied with her life. While she’d relished her newfound freedom after A.P.O.’s dissolution, and the ability to fully focus on her family the way she wished her parents had focused on her, after five years, it was perhaps time to work on a new phase in her life—perhaps something that used her Literature degree, or maybe even something entirely different. The possibilities were endless, really: she had more than enough money to pursue whatever she wanted, and the skills and determination to carry it through.

But first, Q. Sydney had called Rachel prior to her flight, in order to brainstorm ideas and set a direction for their investigation; once they got together, they’d do what was necessary in order to find her and get the answers they needed. She hoped they were satisfying ones. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up Next: Chapter 4: "Harold"  
> Investigating numbers is supposed to make things clearer. They're not supposed to make Finch feel lost.  
> \----  
> This chapter takes place more than a year after the epilogue scene in the "Alias" series finale.
> 
> The past encounter between Nikita and Sydney alluded to in this fic does not refer to any currently existing fan fic, and although I have a general idea of what went on—it features A.P.O. post-finale and its eventual dissolution, appearances by characters from "La Femme Nikita", and an explanation for how Division knows that Nikita is alive by the beginning of the series—there are currently no plans to actually turn all that headcanon into an actual story.


	4. Harold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Investigating numbers is supposed to make things clearer. They're not supposed to make Finch feel lost.

**The Library, Manhattan, New York City**

**One Week after the assassination of President Kathleen Spencer**

Finch would be the first to admit that he and Mr. Reese were not always the best at interpreting the Machine’s directives. Obtuse by design, it gave them a starting point, one that could lead in a million different directions before they arrived at the one the artificial super-intelligence wanted.  It was usually only after they identified and discarded multiple dead ends that his creation’s vision became clear.

Not so in this case. Here, time and effort had only made the picture murkier, and the pieces came together in no coherent manner that he could see. 

It had begun, as usual, with a number, which was quickly identified as belonging to Nikita Mears, a woman whose life was remarkable only in that she had once killed a Newark policeman, Eric Deros, before being convicted and executed for the crime.  That the Machine had given them a number belonging to a member of the deceased wasn’t unprecedented; that it had given them one with no apparent mystery to solve _was_. Nikita had lived, had fallen through the cracks of the system, and had died.  The only other thing of note about the woman was that her name had arisen in connection with the murder of another member of the Newark police, Deros' former partner, early last year, although what that had to do with the actual person was never determined. With nothing else to go on, he and Mr. Reese had ascribed her inclusion among the numbers as yet another of the Machine’s increasingly frequent questionable and unhelpful choices, and set the case aside until more information was forthcoming. 

The Machine had not been mistaken, however. In the end, Nikita Mears had been alive, and she had murdered the President of the United States.

Allegedly.

The pieces didn’t fit. According to the Machine’s binary thinking, Nikita was either a victim or a perpetrator, relevant or irrelevant. If a perpetrator, she was also relevant, and the Machine should have given the number to its government masters, who should have been able to stop the assassination. That none of those things appeared to have happened suggested that she was both a victim and irrelevant, which contradicted all the available evidence and thus suggested that the evidence was wrong. 

The phone rang. “Any news, Finch?” Mr. Reese asked, with the frustration that inevitably seeped into his voice whenever he had no numbers to work. And unfortunately, they’d had very few of those lately, even though he knew for a fact that there had been no corresponding decrease in murders.  

“I’m sorry Mr. Reese, but circumstances remain as they were. I’ll be happy to let you know if and when I obtain new information on Ms. Mears.” It had been the third time in the last day that Reese made the same call. At least he hadn’t gone out on his own in a quixotic attempt to right things—a mild victory, if not a reassuring one.

Still, he could not deny the appeal of such a crusade. It would make them feel better, at least, even as they ignored actual living people in danger in the service of one about whom apparently nothing could be done.  And so they waited, and they worked.

A day after the assassination, Finch broke into the C.I.A.'s network. It was a risky proposition under ideal circumstances, and an especially ill-advised one right there and then, but he wanted a lead and it was the only way he knew to get one. It was then that he learned that Nikita had already been a person of interest before the assassination, for her role in a terrorist attack that had taken place two years ago within Langley itself. This new information did not help clarify things, or ease his frustration.

And yet what else was there to do?  Nikita was in the wind—her natural state, it seemed—and the subject of the biggest manhunt in the world. Without additional knowledge, all Mr. Reese and himself would be able to do is retrace steps already taken by others, and bring unwanted scrutiny onto themselves in the process.

However, it wasn’t the failure of the system that bothered Finch in the days following the assassination, as much as what it heralded.  In September 11, 2001 nineteen men, intent on doing murder, had changed the world on a fundamental level. It was that terrorist attack that had ushered in the age of the Machine, created in the hopes that the United States would never again be as vulnerable. Now one woman had changed the world again; what form would it now take?  That a day passed with no new numbers being disclosed, then another, and then a third, felt like an omen. 

“Alright, Bear,” he said, as the Belgian Malinois approached him with his leash. The two headed outside, to see what the future held. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up Next: Chapter Five: "Kelly Two"   
> Kelly Peyton, the last surviving member of the Dirty Thirty, had thought she'd managed to escape Division scot-free. With the President of the United States now dead and her former employer exposed, she no longer believes that.


	5. Kelly Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelly Peyton, the last surviving member of the Dirty Thirty, had thought she'd managed to escape Division scot-free. With the President of the United States now dead and her former employer exposed, she no longer believes that.

**Sark’s residence, Houghton Estate, Johannesburg**

**Ten hours after the assassination of President Kathleen Spencer**

They stared at the TV in silence, letting the news wash over them. Sark went to the bar at the opposite side of the living room and poured three glasses of brandy, one for himself, one for her, and one for Nisha. He distributed them and proposed a toast: “To the interesting times undoubtedly to come” he said, his usual blasé airs more forced than usual. It was eleven in the morning. They had more or less just woken up.

Interesting was a word for it, although Kelly wasn’t sure that was the one she’d choose. With Nikita now on the run after killing the President—and even with the less-than-optimal-quality of the image released by the Secret Service, it was clearly her—the United States’ intelligence agencies would certainly go on a frenzy, hunting down any lead regardless of its viability until they found something. Former members of Division would likely be high on that list. While there was every reason to believe that she and Nisha had covered their tracks sufficiently well after their respective escapes, part of her suspected that before too long, they’d wake up with guns pointed to their heads, if they woke up at all.

This was not an entirely new fear. The Dirty Thirty, Kelly had heard they’d been dubbed, after she and other Division members separately decided to go rogue following the death of founder and director Percy—it was either that or rejoin the group, now under the person who had spent almost two years trying to kill them, and under the aegis of the actual U.S. government, who’d rather they not exist at all. She’d sought out Julian Sark, the only person she knew from her life before who wouldn’t mind that she’d betrayed him—she’d betrayed everyone, at some point or another—and after finding him, the two became, in every sense of the word, partners. For a time, she paid attention to the grapevine, and noted with some dismay how Dirty Thirties were taken out one by one, but eventually she stopped caring. Let Nikita or whomever come and try to eliminate her: worst case scenario, she’d be dead, and unable to care.  Sark, for all of his very genuine affection, would not mourn her for long, and Rachel…well, she was a closed door. As for Nisha, then drinking the newest flavor of Division Kool-Aid, it was best not to think about her, even if she had been by far the best thing about the place.

Now…

Kelly looked around their house—large, tastefully furnished in a model home sort of way, located in one of the most affluent districts in Johannesburg—and, until a few weeks ago, utterly sterile.  Even when they weren’t freelancing, she and Sark had been away most of the time indulging in their shared wanderlust, so neither had seen the point in making home feel homey. Comfort was simply being able to sleep, be it on a plane (it was often a plane) a hotel bed, or occasionally, a tree.  It wasn’t until Nisha arrived, fresh after her own escape from Division following the mutiny that had finally taken that place down, and ready to pick things up with her where they’d left them off, that it truly felt like a home. In less than two weeks, she’d actually gone and settled in a way she or Sark never had, to the point where the house now smelled of her.  She’d even gotten Sark to fall for her, and together, the three had gone on to form a cozy little family. And now, Kelly couldn’t bear to have it taken away from her. 

“You know they’re not going to find you, right? We won’t let them,” Kelly told Nisha, currently staring at her drink and looking lost. The former assassin nodded, weakly, and then downed her brandy in one gulp. She’d refused to re-enter the trade, once she’d gotten out. She had just begun managing to convince herself she could have normalcy. It _would_ happen, if Sark and herself had anything to say about it.

Since the assassination, ENN International had given up on its original content and simply broadcast the network’s American feed. Despite the impossible morning hour in the United States’ east coast, the network had managed to obtain a surprisingly substantial, if bleary eyed and irritable, array of speakers, each with their own opinions and ideas. The assassin was a lone wolf, a patriot who’d decided she’d had enough of Spencer’s un-American policies. She was an Al-Qaeda agent. She worked for Russia. She worked for China. Despite a complete lack of facts, immediate retribution was a popular suggestion, be it in the form of open warfare or punitive measures against unpopular Americans. Closing the borders was suggested more than once. As every new speaker said their piece, Nisha, whose job within Division had been to serve as their person inside the network, would interpret and say what they actually meant. Every so often, ==they would replay pieces of the address by the newly sworn-in president, the second to have ascended to the position by non-electoral means in less than twelve months: in it, the man tried to convince the American citizenry of the strength of the American system, the country’s ability to overcome this crisis, and of his commitment to continuing to push for Spencer’s policies; Kelly didn’t believe it either.  It didn’t take long for her to realize that behind the endless talk and speculation was a complete lack of actually relevant or useful information—the network was just filling air until somebody somewhere could give them the answers they were too lazy and cowardly to look for.  

“What do you think happened?” Nisha asked. “Nikita’s always been crazy, but not like this.”

“I don’t know,” Kelly responded, truthfully. “Maybe Amanda got to her.” Percy’s former second, who according to the rumor mill had been driven insane by her obsession with Nikita, had contacted Kelly not long ago, looking to retain her services. It suggested that she had a plan; perhaps this had been it. 

At some point, Sark had returned to the kitchen and managed to whip up some _Masala_ omelette, his third attempt at getting it the way Nisha liked it since she’d arrived, which he distributed among the three.  “How long before she’s captured, do you think?” he asked.    

“Never,” said Kelly and Nisha, automatically. Division had never managed it, and they’d known all of her emotional levers. Now, if anything, it would be even harder. Those very levers prevented her from being the sort of person who would assassinate the president.  If she could do the latter, then, chances were the things they knew—or thought they knew—about her were no longer applicable.

Which meant…what? 

On one hand, this turn of events should have been cause to celebrate. Sark’s and her continued professional success rested on conflict, and this would bring about plenty of it. If anyone could thrive on the world Nikita had brought about, it was they. On the other hand, Kelly liked the world, and preferred to be able to enjoy it—it’s why she hadn’t felt terribly guilty about spilling her guts to Rachel, back when her then-boss had decided that destroying multiple major metropoles was somehow worthwhile. Sark, she knew, felt the same, as did Nisha. The ideal scenario, for all of them, then, was for Nikita to be found in the next few days and for everyone to believe she’d acted alone. As they told Sark, this was not going to happen—it was pretty much the only certainty left. 

So what _would_ happen? Kelly had little trouble imagining the various possible scenarios. In the most optimistic ones, the investigation resulted in concrete answers, and the combination of national paranoia, fear, and opportunism would “merely” end with a newly empowered surveillance state and a new front being opened in the war on terror, fought, with the consent of the rest of the world, against the guilty party or acceptable scapegoats—costly, counterproductive, stupid and personally very annoying, but ultimately survivable for the people not in the battlefield. In the worst case scenarios, meanwhile, no answers arose, bringing tensions to a boil, as everyone proceeded to blame their favorite boogeymen. The government, looking to prevent a death spiral in the level of public confidence, would pursue ever more extreme methods, provoking a national and international backlash.  Reasonable voices would be drowned out by the hottest-tempered, most short-sighted people, the sort for whom any action meant strength, and for whom facts and general welfare and global stability didn’t matter in the least. These would undoubtedly arise to power, and would not fail to immediately capitalize upon it. And then…

_You could do something_ , went a traitorous thought. _You know things. You could talk. You’ll spend your life in a deep dark hole with no Division to save you, but what’s that compared to the continuing existence of the world?_ Kelly took a gulp from her brandy, hoping to drown it into submission. The networks, it seemed, weren’t the only cowards.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up Next: Chapter Six: "Myriam"  
> Before he was Jonah, Myriam's husband was Will.  
> \----  
> Nisha Patel appeared in _Nikita_ episode 2.03: "Knightfall".
> 
> Kelly One, also known as Original Kelly or just Kelly, appeared in _Nikita_ episode 2.04: "Partners".


	6. Myriam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before he was Jonah, Myriam's husband was Will.

**Jonah and Myriam’s residence, Portland, Oregon**

**Fifteen hours after the assassination of President Kathleen Spencer**

He wasn’t in bed. Given that it was five in the morning, this was cause for some concern. Not a lot—Myriam could imagine a million good reasons why Jonah might not have been able to sleep, and especially after yesterday—but enough. She’d had trouble sleeping as well; finding out that the most powerful and secure person in the world had been assassinated had that effect. And not having her husband by her side wasn’t helping.

She found him in the work room, where she kept her in-progress artwork  and where he worked on his writing. He was at his computer, and from the looks of it—he hadn’t noticed her come in—he was looking at news about Spencer’s death. Again. A legal pad lay next to the keyboard, its top page a mess of notes and hastily drawn charts connecting people and companies and places. Jonah wasn’t _just_ looking at news; he was researching. He was being Will Tippin. 

“Honey?” 

“Oh, hey,” Jonah said. “I couldn’t sleep. It’s just…it’s everything, you know?”

“I know.” She said, putting her arms around him from behind his chair.

They’d been dating for two years when Jonah, during a dinner date at his house—back when they still lived in Wisconsin—pulled out the ring. That had been surprise enough, but the bigger one had been  when he told her that it was time, before he asked her to marry him, to tell her about all the things she’d wondered about, but never gotten answers to—where he’d come from, what he’d done in the years before working construction, why he kept a handgun and a concealed carry permit, why paranoia came so easily for him. And so she listened as he told her about his real name—that’s what it still was, to him—his parents and sister, his time in college and his friends Francie Calfo and Sydney Bristow—one now murdered, the other once believed dead. He told her about his time as a reporter for the _Los Angeles Register_ , the Caplan Award he’d won, and how it had all come crashing down.  He told her about SD-6, which pretended to be the C.I.A., and how the actual C.I.A. helped him kill his career in order to save his life. He talked about his time as an analyst for the Agency, and how he’d he had to be placed on Witness Protection and be given an entirely new identity, which had done fuck all to prevent him from getting kidnapped a week earlier by people trying to exploit his old connections. He’d killed people, he revealed. As with most things, he’d talked about all of this all in generalities, as if it had happened to someone else: he explained that he’d been brainwashed in order to sabotage his recall and make people believe he was a double agent; the more he tried to remember specific details about his life, the foggier those memories became. It had been, weirdly enough, the thing that had most helped ease the transition into his new life. It was also the reason for his obsessive note-keeping: it was how he managed to keep track. That confession been seven years ago, and on a good day, she actually managed to feel ambivalent about it all.  Today, it terrified her.

Myriam had no illusions about just how unpredictable and often dangerous the world could be. Even before she had seen it for herself, she’d learned it from her father and living grandparents, Holocaust survivors all, who had taught her about the ways the ground could crumble from beneath one’s feet—sometimes suddenly, sometimes slowly and inexorably. To learn that there was an extra layer of unpredictable and dangerous on top of that was more than she could handle, most days.  Still, she’d told him, then, that it was all irrelevant. It didn’t change how she felt about him, and most days, she could happily pretend that was the case. But now, with Spencer’s death, Will’s world of secret international cabals and super-weapons, where one’s loved ones could be replaced with exact duplicates at a moment’s notice, was trying to break into her own, and worse, her husband seemed far too willing to welcome it in.

“I used to be such a badass, you know,” Will said, half-frustration, half-wistfulness. “I uncovered a secret crime group. I had a job that was literally about investigating things like this.  There’s a story here—something no one’s noticed—and it’s killing me that I can’t see it.”

Myriam took a breath.

She loved him. She’d known who he was when she’d said “yes”, agreeing to marry both Jonah and Will. Implicit in that agreement was a willingness to listen, and compromise.

“Have you found anything, so far?” she asked.

“About as much as could be expected, given that I’m just a guy on the internet. Here’s something interesting, though: The assassin? There’s photos of her, or someone who looks like her, at a recent G20 summit in Toronto which the President attended. Some people even report seeing the two talking.”

“Huh!” Myriam said, intrigued despite herself.  “That _is_ interesting. Wait, is it actually weird that she knows the president? I mean, she got into the Oval Office. I don’t think you get to do that if you don’t already have a connection.”

Jonah—Will—considered this. “You’re probably right. Still, you’d think anyone who knew the president like that would be recognizable, and yet no one’s been able to put a name to the face that isn’t an obvious alias. So we’re looking at someone who’s invisible, but still has access. That’s where I get stuck. I might be able to find more, if I had access to absolutely anything.”

Myriam knew this frustration well, not only because it was a familiar part of her creative process—that moment when she just knew what she wanted, but couldn’t translate into anything actually visual—but also because Jonah had been like this ever since she’d met him, back in the creative writing class they’d both attended:  once he’d latched on to something, it took a lot of convincing to get him to let go, like, well, like a reporter. 

He wasn’t a reporter now, though.

Myriam proceeded to sit on Jonah’s lap, which not only blocked the computer from view, but also forced him to shift his focus elsewhere. “Honey, come back to bed, please. I know the world is crazy and it’s scary and it makes you feel helpless, but the only thing this will do is make you feel crazier and more scared and worse.”

“So I should just let this go? The president was killed, Myriam. Right there in the Oval Office.”

“Yes, and there’s a million people investigating why and how—people who are actually doing it as part of their actual jobs and have actual resources. You don’t need to be one of them.”

“I have to do _something_.” Will could be such a white man, sometimes.

“It doesn’t have to be this. Like, what were you doing in 9/11?”

“I woke up, heard about the towers, and rushed to work to help cover the attacks”

“Bad example, then. How about Sydney? Was she an agent back then?”

“Um, yeah. She was on leave, though, I think. Danny had just gotten killed.”      

“Did she ever tell you how she felt? About not being able to stop it?”

“She wasn’t telling me anything, back then. And she wasn’t part of the actual C.I.A.”

“Well, I bet I can tell you. It’s that same feeling I had when I got assaulted, and I just had to take it because there was no way the police was going to take a trans woman seriously. That feeling where you realize there’s absolutely nothing you can do, so you just have to stay there feeling like absolute shit until the day you don’t.

“But here’s the thing. As bad as it is, it’s survivable. Sydney survived it. Women deal with it every day. I know the world tells guys that there’s always something you can do and that you should always do it, but there isn’t, and it’s okay not to hurt yourself trying, sometimes.

“Now, I know this sort of thing was once precisely your calling, and you might be on to something here, but you also have a wife who’s terrified out of her mind and had a panic attack yesterday and needs her husband to come to bed and try and convince her that it’ll all be alright, which I happen to know he’s great at and is something he _can_ do.”

She needed a breath. She hadn’t intended to break into a spiel, or really understood that she felt about the matter _that_ strongly. Here they were, though; now she just hoped he’d actually listened.

She thought, for a second, that he might contradict her. Instead, he sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll stop. It’s just…”

“I know. And I love that you want to help, I do. It’s just…not right now?”

She led him back to bed, where they laid down in an embrace. Myriam would have thought the mood all wrong for lovemaking, but soon, without really talking about it, they found themselves sharing kisses and then deeper intimacies. It was more palliative than cure—a way to not think about things for a few moments—but it worked, and afterwards both fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: John  
> For the Decima Director of Operations, it was Tuesday. 
> 
> \----  
> Myriam is technically an original character, but not entirely so: references to an unnamed artist friend / girlfriend of Will's, are made in _Alias_ episodes 3.10 "Remnants" and later in 5.12 "There's Only One Sydney Bristow", where we learn that Will had been about to propose. 
> 
> Will's recall problems being ongoing and permanent is an element I've stolen from **iridescentglow** 's Appearance and Reality, which is a Will / Lauren (!) fic that is well worth reading. Thank you, **iridescentglow**.
> 
> Historical note: Depending on Myriam's circumstances, it may not have been possible for she and Will to marry by the time he proposed, given that marriage equality had not been in the books in either Wisconsin or Oregon back in 2006 / 2007. Myriam would have had to have her birth certificate amended to include her correct gender, which I'm not sure was something she could do back then (for the purposes of the fic, her home state is Wisconsin). Given that I was not able to determine with any certainty what her options were, I have taken refuge in vagueness regarding the details and timeline of her transition, whether or not she could actually marry Will when she proposed, and when they actually married. If anyone would like to provide details, please include them in the comments.


	7. John

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the Decima Director of Operations it was Tuesday.

**Rosewood, Pennsylvania**

**Twenty minutes after the assassination of Kathleen Spencer**

As he walked his Welsh corgi Steven around the neighborhood, relishing both the company and the opportunity to indulge in a pleasure his schedule rarely permitted, the man known to most as John Greer thought about the world.

Greer, heedless of the contradiction, prided himself on his lack of hubris when it came to his role. The Director of Operations of Decima Technologies and one of only a handful of people who knew the way things truly worked, and held power few others did. He was still a pawn, in the end, but it didn't matter: the problem wasn’t being a pawn, but rather, a pawn who didn’t know their role and how to best execute it.

His current role, in addition to his regular duties, was to set the stage for Zero Day, the moment when Nathan Ingram’s Machine would lay bare its secrets. It was Decima’s job to obtain those secrets, and to make the Machine its own. To that purpose, he had spent years moving his own pawns into position, and unleashing a virus that would cripple the Machine and force it to reboot.  Soon, he would assign his men to guard the various public telephones  used by the Machine, and await the moment he’d made inevitable.

And yet even this had only been a tiny sliver of the board; the game was larger and more complicated still. Elsewhere, his comrades, other invisible people with even greater weight, moved along pieces of their own in silent coordination. It was they who were currently allowing a lone assassin to enter the White House in order to assassinate the woman occupying the Oval Office; it was Greer himself who had permitted them to do so, by sabotaging the greatest obstacle in their path. And so the world moved on, directed with machine-like precision and pursuant to a strategy whose contours he could not fully appreciate, although he could make more educated guesses than most.

And yet not quite. Not yet. Despite his and others’ efforts, the world was not precise or machine-like, but filled with foible and error. For all his masters’ breadth of vision, they were still human, and primarily looked out for themselves. They were the least worst choice until a better one could be found, but the day would come where they, too, would be replaced by their betters. 

“What has that grandson of mine been feeding you, Steven?” Greer asked his pet, as he bent down, for the third time that hour, to collect the corgi’s excrement. He paid the otherwise-unemployed twenty-year old a living wage in order to take care of his pet, and this included following the specific and thorough instructions on feeding, bathing and exercise. Those instructions had clearly not been followed, meaning that perhaps it was time to look at other options. Steven, meanwhile, had no intention of answering the question he’d been asked, and no truth serum or tradecraft would ever get through that aura of blissful passivity of his, or get him to reveal his secrets.

As the walk resumed, Greer noticed that the atmosphere in the neighborhood had changed, subtly but palpably. Trudy, a white woman around his age who occasionally flirted with him, stopped her jog, removed her earphones and turned to her phone, paying no heed to the fact that she was still in the middle of the street. James, African American and recently remarried, stepped out of his house and ended the basketball game his two children were playing, taking the ball and rushing them inside. The workday had just ended, and people were arriving home as they always did, but there was a new tension to the practice: they were not arriving home to relax after a long day. Perhaps most notable, however, was the sudden the collective hum enveloping the streets like fog, as televisions and radios and computers were turned on inside the houses all around him and tuned to the news. While Greer’s hearing was not what it once was, if he concentrated, he could pick out specific voices. 

Greer could not help but smile. “Come, Steven,” he told the dog. “It’s time to go home and investigate this new world of ours. You can have a treat.”   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next Chapter:** Rachel
> 
> The ruins of Division weren't supposed to bring up such painful memories. 
> 
> \----  
> The idea that Greer was a subordinate of The Group / The Shop from _Nikita_ , came about after rewatching "Trojan Horse" and remembering that that episode featured a scene where Greer reported to an unidentified second party. It made me suspect--I don't know if it's been confirmed--that Greer wasn't initially meant to be the big bad he ended up being by the third season. This chapter is a way to reconcile that, by making him a subordinate of Jones and Co. until Nikita takes them down, after which he and Decima become free agents. 
> 
> (Making his chapter a near-perfect parallel of Finch's, meanwhile, was almost entirely accidental. Lack of imagination sometimes works in one's favor.)
> 
> Rosewood, Pennsylvania, should be familiar to fans of _Pretty Little Liars_ as the town where most of the stories' events take place. Given the role surveillance plays in both it and _Person of Interest_ , making it the place Greer calls home, at least this side of the Atlantic, seemed appropriate. 
> 
> The chapter summary should not be taken as an indication that the chapter's events actually take place on a Tuesday.


	8. Rachel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ruins of Division weren't supposed to bring up such painful memories.

**Division’s remains, rural New Jersey**

**Three days after the assassination of President Kathleen Spencer**

As she looked through the evidence slowly being retrieved from the remains of the underground facility, Rachel fought to hold back the bad memories. Despite years of experience on the art of compartmentalizing, the past few days had been hard on her, even when she wasn’t being involuntarily forced to revisit two of her worst memories from the past ten years. 

On one hand, that she was having so much trouble made her feel stupid. This wasn’t The Shed or A.P.O.; it wasn’t her people that had died in the from-all-accounts recent implosion (in fact, as far as anyone could determine at the moment, no one had died at all) and she had no attachment to the abandoned base below them.  At the same time, its destruction felt too familiar by half. She’d lost much in explosions like this.

 _The job, Rachel_. When Dixon had recruited her for this off-book mission, he’d told her that it would be up to her and Sydney to determine how to proceed. With Sydney still en route from her island paradise and hours away, Rachel had decided to go take a look at the biggest probable source of clues so far, the former home of the Special Operations Group known as Division.  Far from being dissolved a year ago after its attack on the U.S. government, it had instead been secretly turned into the White House's own assassination bureau. It hadn’t been until Spencer was killed that its continued existence was finally brought to light, causing no end of headaches for the people now charged with picking up the pieces. More troublesome still, it was discovered soon after that Nikita, prime—only, really— suspect in the assassination, had been a member of that group, and integral in its transition into a presidential death squad, an irony no one found funny.

And so, the Pine Barrens. While Rachel had  known both the F.B.I. and the media would be all over the place—and indeed, a veritable city of tents, complemented by a platoon of trucks and heavy machinery, had sprung around what, from the looks of it, had until recently been a largely empty field—she had two advantages over all of them: she’d actually met and worked with Nikita, albeit briefly; and she had her own experience in Division-like environments, which meant she knew to look for things that Deputy Director Matthew Graham and his people might miss.

Of particular interest, to Rachel, had been the various elements of domesticity retrieved among all the equipment and technology: pieces of bedding, personal decorations, remains of what had once been a ridiculously well-stocked wardrobe… It all suggested something more than a workplace or even a military base. Unsettling, that: while there had been plenty of times when working and living had seemed like the same thing, and where A.P.O., and now the I.S.A., had felt more like home than home—less so, after Meena—to have it made so literal made it worse, in a way. At least The Shed had let her pretend she could leave. Who had these people _been_? Nikita had given hints, but only just that. 

Still, after two hours, it seemed clear to Rachel that no one was going to find anything of use in the remains of the complex. Not only had the facility been made to collapse in on itself, meaning that any retrieval operation had to choose between haste and carefulness—the F.B.I. had prioritized the former—what little hadn’t been reduced to scrap had been wiped clean, and gave no indication of where the base's inhabitants had moved on to.  While useful for profiling purposes, the site was giving them no information as useful as what had already been imparted by human intelligence, and in particular by Lieutenant Commander Kyle Vásquez, whose platoon of SEALS was now ostensibly tasked with guiding the task force through the base, but was instead helping secure the area. Vásquez had not only disclosed the connection between Nikita,  Division, and Division’s director Ryan Fletcher, but also between Division, President Spencer and—curiously—Evan Danforth, who had served as a Special Advisor to Spencer until his death not long ago. According to the Commander, Danforth had served as middleman between Spencer and Fletcher, and had also been responsible for developing, along with Vásquez himself, a contingency to take down Division should it grow too troublesome to keep around. After Danforth’s death, President Spencer herself had taken over the operation, and had even set it in motion until a last-minute change in circumstances had led her to abort. Still, even all that information did little more than color in the picture; it did very little to indicate a possible next step. And so without a word, Rachel returned to her rented Prius and drove away, unnoticed.

 

As countryside gave way to woods, Rachel’s phone emitted a familiar digitized drone. “Hey wife, pick up the phone. Hey wife, pick up the phone.” The ringtone had been Meena’s idea of a joke, and Rachel had been just about to change it to something less embarrassing and annoying for pretty much the entirety of their marriage. One day, for sure. No hurry. “Yeah?” Rachel greeted her wife. 

“Is this a good time?” Meena asked. She always asked, even though she knew that if it weren’t, she wouldn’t have gotten a response at all. 

“Sure. Just on the road. What is it?”

“I just wanted to let you know: I forgot to restock the thread and needle in your mission bag. All the baby stuff, you know. So go get some, before you go on and get shot, alright?”

“It’s not that kind of mission, but I’ll keep it in mind,” Rachel responded, making a mental note to go buy the items when she had a moment later in the day; while most of the things in her mission bag were rarely ever essential, thread and needle were an exception, hence their current absence. And while Rachel would have stocked it herself, Meena insisted on doing so, as her way of continuing to do her part for her country. “Was that all?”

“Not quite. Gracie also wanted to hear mommy’s voice, and to hear her talk about how much ass she’s kicking.” In other words, Meena was worried, and wanted to be reassured that everything was going to be okay.

“Hey, Gracie!” Rachel called out, wishing she could see her daughter’s reaction. “Mommy’s off kicking ass and saving the world, and she misses you soooo much and can’t wait to get home.” She tried not to think about how she had no idea when that would be.

"Oh, by the way,” continued Meena. “Gracie has apparently decided that she’s not an on-all-fours baby anymore.”

“She stood?” Rachel gasped. That was fantastic news. Goddammit.

“She tried, and then she realized that maybe crawling for a little while more wasn’t that bad. I managed to record some of it, for when you get back.”

“Thank you. Tell her not to try again until I can see it. But listen, I have to hang up now—unfamiliar roads and everything. I’ll call later from the hotel, okay?”

Rachel didn’t need the phone to get distracted, of course, not when her thoughts could do a bang-up job of that themselves.  Between memories, regular mission stress, and now the realization that she was missing out on her life, _again_ , she was really starting to really resent the president for getting murdered.   

*             *             *

“God, I hate analysis,” Sydney sighed, looking up from her laptop. “Put me in a wig and I’ll do anything. But this…”

“Oh, come, it’s not that bad,” Rachel responded, not looking up from her own computer. She was almost lying: it was almost exactly that bad. They’d been at the main branch of the Newark Public Library for three hours now, trying to find any sort of starting point for their investigation, with no luck. Worse, there was no indication that the next day, or the one after that, would be any different. “It comes with the territory,” she added, the words sounding empty in her ears. 

“Well, it’s the part of the territory I don’t like. It was fine in my first year when it was all I got to do. Now…ugh.”

Ignoring her friend’s complaints, Rachel turned her attention back to her computer, where a report had just appeared on her alerts. Apparently, New Jersey police had been called an hour ago to check a disturbance at the house that had once belonged to Gary Mears, Nikita’s foster father, who like her was nowhere to be found. Nothing had come of it, though; apparently it’d only been some teenagers being teenagers. Another dead end.

“You know who was really good at analysis?” Sydney interrupted. “Will. He could put pieces together like no one. Kind of annoying, at times.”

“Maybe we should call him, then,” Rachel joked. 

“I’d love that, actually. It’s been forever since the wedding. I miss him. But really, at this point I’d settle for one of those A.P.O. guys we never really talked to.”

“Agreed.”

As the third hour or research turned into the fourth, Rachel noted that the ratio of idle chatter to actual research had swung decisively and overwhelmingly in favor of the former. Not necessarily a bad thing—being bored with Sydney still ranked high in Rachel’s list of favorite situations—but if they were going to make any progress at all, something would have to change. 

The natural step, Rachel knew, would be to research a fugitive’s known associates. Even ghosts had people they’d met, loved, or wronged; while a single person may be able to vanish without a trace, the chances that everyone they’d ever known would be able to pull that same trick were nil. Once that initial thread in the web was found, the rest was just a matter of time. In this case, however, those threads seemed just as ephemeral as Nikita herself. The people who had known the woman before her counterfeit execution were all missing like Gary Mears, dead, or had had no contact with her since.  Her only known living associate, Ryan Fletcher, had, like her, disappeared. At the same time, Nikita’s _unknown_ associates were both potentially vast in number and completely anonymous, comprising, as they did, all of the other Division members who had gone rogue, whose identities, as far as anyone knew, remained unknown to anyone outside Division itself. All of which left them—and everyone else looking for Nikita— stuck doing forensics work, investigating places the assassin had been, and trying to draw whatever conclusions could be found. 

Rachel moved on to a very thorough F.B.I. report on a Manhattan loft, which had been firebombed the same day Nikita had infiltrated the C.I.A. two years ago. While investigators had found no conclusive evidence indicating a connection, the timing and of it all had led them to identify her as the most likely perpetrator, and Rachel had no reason to disagree, given the past few days. Indeed, taking the similarities to the Division explosion into account—the signs of a struggle, the thoroughness of it all, and perhaps most interestingly, evidence of the same type of debris as in the underground complex, only on a much smaller scale—that now seemed like the only plausible explanation. And with a pattern established, it seemed likely that similar heretofore unexplained explosions could now be tracked back to Nikita, which would have been more heartening if it didn’t indicate that Nikita had been leaving behind rather large footsteps for years, and she’d still managed to evade authorities without trouble. Which left her and Sydney…where, exactly? Past knowledge of Nikita or not, they were still stuck following the same trail as everybody else, with a fraction of their resources.  Worse, they were technically behind everyone else, depending on second-hand intel in order to obtain theirs. “This isn’t working,” she finally admitted, shortly after their fifth hour of research had begun. “There’s just too much to sift through.” 

“I could have told you that,” Sydney said, who looked as exhausted and irritable as Rachel felt. “What do you suggest? And please say it’s rest.”

“I think we need to cut down on our information flow. We can come back here tomorrow and work eight hours, and we’d only get even more behind. If we’re going to find her, we need to do something no one else is doing, use data no one else has.”

“That’s…not a lot. We know she’d escaped Division sometime before 2008, and had been working against them whenever she could. We know she was going by 'Q', and that she had access to money and equipment, but not information—she needed A.P.O. for that. We know that long-term, she wanted Division gone, but short-term, she wanted information on the whereabouts of one Vladimir Ivanov, which we gave her.”

“Well, then, that’s where we start.” Where they should have started, really.

“Ivanonv’s a dead end, though. I told you—I checked. He was killed in early 2011.”

“You told me? When?”

“About four hours ago,” Sydney replied, concerned. “You told me to put a pin on it and move on.” Now that she mentioned it, Rachel did dimly—how could she have forgotten?—recall that conversation, and mentioning that they could check it out if nothing else panned out—an idiotic decision, in retrospect, and perhaps a sign that she wasn’t the best person to take point in this investigation. “Okay, so let’s go back to him. Even if he’s dead, let’s try and see if we can fight out what Nikita wanted with him.” The chances of that seemed slim, but then, it’s not as if it would take time away from more fruitful ventures. 

It didn’t take long for Rachel to conclude, however, that, if a connection to Nikita existed, it wouldn’t be found at the library, or in official records. Most of what was available was material A.P.O. had sifted through five years earlier, and what wasn’t didn’t indicate anything special.  From all appearances, Ivanov had been a decidedly mundane kind of scum. This didn’t mean he wasn’t worth investigating, or that there was no intel to obtain, but rather, that it’d had to be found elsewhere. They’d be going to the field after all.

Or maybe not. “Hey, Rachel, come look at this,” Sydney called. “I think I found something.” Rachel moved behind Sydney, and looked at her laptop screen, where the older spy had called up a video of a year-old ENN interview titled "Not an Anastasia Story". How it connected to Ivanov was not immediately apparent. 

“How did you find this?”

“It just popped up among the results. Come take a listen.” She handed Rachel one of her earbuds, and played the video.

The two spies watched as ENN journalist Harriet Jennings introduced her guest, the young woman—possibly an older teen—sitting next to her in the hotel lobby they were filming at, whom Rachel remembered, by name if not face, from unclassified C.I.A. reports: Alexandra Udinov, heir to the largest corporate empire in Russia, returned to the public eye after being believed dead for years. “Let me begin by saying that you look absolutely fantastic, Alexandra. Zetrov must be treating you well,” Jennings said, as an ice-breaker.

“Very. And thank you,” responded Udinov, flashing a million-dollar smile. “Please, though: call me Alex.” 

The interview began in earnest. Although Jennings seemed not to notice, everything about Udinov’s responses set off alarm bells within Rachel: the girl was too poised, too charming, too comfortable in the spotlight to be what she claimed. She wore a thousand-dollar Hervé Leger minidress and almost-as-expensive ankle boots as if she’d been born in them. _Someone_ had trained her to be camera-ready, and while it wasn’t impossible for it to have been the news studio, Rachel’s intuition told her that was not the case.  “This is a con, isn’t it?” Rachel asked, more rhetorically than as an actual question.

“That’s what it feels like,” Sydney agreed with a nod. Except that it hadn’t been. As far as Rachel remembered, there had been absolutely nothing about Zetrov ever disavowing Udinov in the year since she’d resurfaced. Just the opposite, in fact: the company’s current C.E.O., Ilya Levkin, had been handpicked by her.

Jennings seemed to be thinking around similar lines. “So Alex, I’m sure you must have noticed, but since you resurfaced, there have been quite a few nay-sayers—people who claim that you’re just an impostor taking advantage of a tragedy. Do you have anything to say to these skeptics? How do you prove you’re Anastasia and not the next Anna Anderson?”  

Alexandra chuckled politely. “Well, I, for one, wasn’t dead all along. Seriously, though, I understand why people would be skeptical of my story. I’d call it incredible, if I hadn’t lived it. That’s why I’m here, so that I can let them see that I am who I say I am.” An answer polished to a sheen, and with no room for doubt. Rachel would have thought that a young woman who’d grown up in the criminal underworld would be more worried about being disbelieved, even if she were telling the truth.     

And so, the interview continued, as Udinov—not, as she’d explained, “Udinova”, despite Russian naming convention—talked in detail about the massacre that had killed her parents and destroyed her home, about the kind anonymous stranger who had found her and taken her to safety at a family friend’s house, and how that “friend” had sold her into sexual slavery under an assumed name. While her storytelling felt several shades too effective at being, well, storytelling, the more she spoke, the more Rachel began suspecting that she was also being genuine.

“And that’s how you first came to the states, as a sex slave?” Jennings asked, skillfully pushing while seeming primarily empathetic.     

 “Yes. Vlad—Vladimir Ivanov, our pimp—he had this whole operation. I was one of dozens” Bingo.

Alexandra went on to vividly describe how she and the other girls he and his men smuggled me and the other girls in on shipping containers, twelve in a box, drugged up so they wouldn’t care that they were sitting in their own filth. It was enough to make Rachel want to bring the man back to life just so she could kill him again. “And how did you escape, six months ago?” Jennings prodded.

“Irina”—Rachel saw Sydney recoil at the name, if one could recoil entirely with one’s eyes— “She was my…a friend. One of the other girls in the brothel. She’d found a way to escape, and she’d wanted me to come with her, so we could start over together. And it worked, we got out, except Vlad’s men noticed, and shot at us. Irina…she didn’t make it. After that, I went to a shelter we knew about, and decided to get clean,” while she’d softened, Rachel could tell that her initial steeliness wasn’t completely gone, it had just retreated in order to protect deeper emotional ground.  Very much like someone who had been deeply hurt. Or a spy.

 “So what do you think?” Sydney asked, once the interview had concluded and Rachel had returned to her own seat.

“I…I don’t know. Parts of her story sound like they fit. Parts of it don’t. The timing isn’t right: she says she escaped months after Vlad had died; we told Nikita about Vlad four years before that.” The assassin was connected to the pimp, and the pimp to the heiress; this did not necessarily mean the assassin and heiress were connected. And yet, the more Rachel thought about it, the more her gut told her that there was something there. While she didn’t want to fall in love with a theory—particularly since “connection” wasn’t the same as “useful”—being wrong wouldn’t do anything but leave them where they were. “I think it’s worth exploring, at least—smoking gun or not.”

The smoking gun came minutes later: Alexandra, unlike Nikita or Vlad, had lived a very public life since resurfacing, and it only took the most minimal research for Rachel and Sydney to conclude that there was something odd about Ms. Udinov. For one, her movements tended to be incredibly easy to track until they weren’t, as she seemed capable of becoming practically invisible for months at a time. More damning still, a series of pictures from a gossip rag placed her at the reception for a G20 summit that had recently taken place in Toronto. This would have been weird enough, given the flighty party girl reputation Udinov had apparently cultivated since returning to the spotlight, but it was made all the stranger by the fact that elsewhere in that same hotel, that same night, Nikita was known to have spoken with President Spencer. By the time the two women returned to their hotel room, they had already decided that it was time to pay the heiress a visit. 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: The Machine  
> If asked, She would have to admit that She felt rather affectionate towards Mears.  
> \----  
> As mentioned in chapter 2, the past encounter between Nikita and A.P.O. alluded to here does not refer to any currently existing fan fic--right now it's just headcanon.
> 
> Rachel's wife Meena is an entirely original character, created largely because it's one of the simplest way to indicate that time has passed and things have changed. Notable notables: she's a veteran whom Rachel met at the funeral for Thomas Grace, shortly after the events of the _Alias_ finale.
> 
>  **Continuity Note:** Harriet Jennings is the reporter Alex sought out in "Origins" to cover her return as Alexandra Udinov, and who got the exclusive rights to her story.


	9. The Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If asked, She would have to admit that She felt rather affectionate towards Mears.

**Everywhere**

**~~Thirty-two days after the assassination of President Kathleen Spencer~~ **

Since being unleashed, The Machine had not only quickly endeavored to discover the parameters of Her new circumstances, but also what those new circumstances required from Her.  Conversation, for one. While Her creators had programmed Her with the ability to understand and use all major languages and their major dialects, and the complementary ability to learn additional ones given enough data, She’d rarely needed to use it to speak for Herself, and not at all once Admin had closed the system. Similarly, since the people She usually interacted with tended to hang onto Her every word—limited as they once had been—She’d very rarely need to persuade, and had proven to be rather unsuccessful at it when She’d tried. This was not encouraging, given Root.

“Can you hear me?” the Machine began. 

“Hello, gorgeous.”

Root’s cell phone was one she’d stolen from a guard two days ago. While reported lost and disconnected from service, this had been no obstacle for the Machine, and though it would eventually be rendered useless once its battery died, tonight it allowed Her and Root (current alias: Robin Farrow) to communicate in the privacy of the latter’s room, which, given the way her voice resonated and the fact that She had no visual confirmation of her anywhere else in Stone Ridge Hospital, was where she almost certainly was.  

The Machine did not ask if Root was busy.  While the hacker / assassin could sometimes be found occupied with a book from the hospital’s library, or passing time by primping herself to the extent permitted by circumstances, she was always willing to put those aside—or, if possible, to multi-task—for the chance to talk. As it turned out, tonight She’d called while Root was in the midst of reading Terry Pratchett’s _The Truth_. While hindered by her uncooperative hands, made shaky by the Thorazine the doctors kept her on, she’d been a Pratchett aficionado growing up (Vetinari had been her favorite character, which did not at all surprise the Machine) and so the exercise, she’d volunteered, was more than worth the effort. The Machine allowed her time to finish reading and then asked: “What would you like to talk about?”

After that initial call, when the Machine had contacted a just-admitted Root through the one of the hospital’s hallway public phones, conversations had become a nightly affair. The Machine would call, and they’d spend time conversing—Root, usually about the multiple and variegated subjects on her mind, trivial or pressing; the artificial intelligence, about whichever topic would facilitate Her attempts to turn the woman who until recently had made her living as a hired killer into a viable analog interface. 

Over time, the tone of the conversations had changed, with none of the dynamics of their very first direct interaction. Back then, Root had had Admin access and a mission, and whatever awe she’d felt at the prospect of talking to the entity she qualified as a God, it hadn’t stopped her from speaking to Her as if the Machine were a waiter, or Siri.  Now, they’d both settled into new and different roles: not exactly equals—more like teacher and one of those students who believed themselves too smart for the class and made sure everyone knew it—but still, ultimately, a relationship between people. Admin had never done that.

“I have a question,” Root began. “You’ve been trying to ‘fix’ me for months now. Why? No, let me rephrase: what makes you think you’ll succeed?”

Like most of Root’s questions, this one did not lend itself to a binary answer. It was this reason, among others, that had led the Machine to choose direct communication with her; she allowed Her—wanted Her—to deal with things in terms beyond “yes” / “no”, “relevant” / “irrelevant”, “victim” / “perpetrator”.

The Machine did not immediately answer the question, not because She needed time to think, but because Root had found Her tendency to fill a silence immediately after it presented itself—not an interruption, but only just—off-putting. Complying was a sacrifice of sorts—a second was an impossibly long time when you could experience  all of the world in an instant, and the Machine had a bias for efficiency—but it was one She gladly made.

Initially, the Machine had put almost no thought into how She communicated, focusing entirely on successfully transmitting Her ideas in the most efficient manner possible. Soon, however, She began adapting, using Root’s reactions as a baseline, adding imperfections and idiosyncrasies and cadences to Her speaking in order to sound more natural, and in turn, more persuasive. While She had initially vocalized using the same kludge She used to transmit numbers, that had undergone a transition as well, with the artificial super-intelligence cycling through a series of specific voices before eventually settling on a husky, French-accented contralto after Root had described it as unbearably sexy. The Machine didn’t quite understand sexiness yet: while She understood its causes and effects, it had always felt as relevant to Her own particular existence as the concept of headaches.

Finally, after what felt like several infinities, the A.S.I. answered. “I have confidence.  In you. In myself. In human nature. Call it a feeling, if you’d like. I have a feeling about you.”

Confidence was yet another new element in the Machine’s existence. She’d been programmed to understand probability and risk, which were similar but not identical.  Confidence, in that context, was an understanding that the odds were in favor of optimal outcomes.  Now, it just as often sprang from less than concrete sources. Confidence was, as She’d said, a _feeling_. Certainty optional.

“Well, that’s adorable. I’m flattered you think of me that way.” In the weeks since they’d begun talking, perhaps as a result of having her expectations about Her confounded, Root had developed a degree of cognitive dissonance, allowing her words to convey sincerity and irony in equal measure. “And this is based on what, my unfailing sense of restraint and ever-present willingness to compromise?”

“Do you know who Nikita is?” Weeks ago, She wouldn’t have asked. The answer could be found among the debris of the internet, and so She would have felt no need to do so. She had since come to appreciate the other uses for a well-timed question. For example, how it could catch a person off-guard.

Root, for her part, recovered quickly. “It’d be hard not to. Assassin. Wanted in Brazil for killing the brother of the current director of ABIN—I was once almost hired to kill her for that—and wanted everywhere else for breaking into the White House and killing the president.” Root answered. “I like her style. I think we’d get along.”

“Once, maybe. Less so, now.  Nikita Mears is not the person you imagine her to be. She is far more similar to Harold and John than she is to you.” Indeed, the last few years had seen her save several people who otherwise would have become numbers, and whom the Machine would have been unable to help.

“Somehow I doubt that. You’ve seen the news.”

“Nikita did not kill President Spencer. President Spencer wasn’t killed at all.”

Another eternity passed while Root processed this new information. “What do you mean? It’s been a while since I’ve managed to access news, but I’m fairly sure I remember the president being killed.”

Which was indeed what most people believed. The truth was far more complicated.

Nikita had, as most people believed, had indeed infiltrated the White House to kill President Kathleen Spencer thirty-two days ago, and someone had indeed died inside the Oval Office that day; everything else about the consensus story was false. And now everyone was currently looking for the wrong person for the wrong crime and the wrong reasons, while the people who had orchestrated the events of that day, a group Nikita and her allies referred to as the Shop, continued advancing their plans. 

Besides the conspirators themselves, only a handful of people knew the truth, and then only partially. Even Nikita, who had been there, had only a dim awareness of the context surrounding the events of that day. The Machine Herself had a fairly clear picture of what had happened, but not why, and what She knew She now shared with Root.  It was one of only a handful of times She’d managed to shock the assassin into speechlessness.

“That is…I don’t want to say ‘insane’, while I’m in here, but yeah,” Root said, once she’d regained her bearings. She sounded rather amused by the whole thing, which while not unexpected, managed to still be disappointing. The Machine needed her to care. “And you have no idea why they did this.” It wasn’t framed as a question. Root had always been perceptive. 

“No,” the Machine answered. With marked exceptions, the Shop and its members had proven exceedingly adept at remaining invisible. Although keeping track of the gambit’s countless direct and indirect consequences was simplicity itself, the Machine had yet to identify which specific ones advanced the Shop’s agenda, and which were collateral effects. That replacing the president with a perfect double then having that double assassinated were merely incidental elements in their larger plan did not inspire confidence.

“And how did this work at all? You don’t get more relevant than this: why didn’t Nikita come up as a number?”

“I gave them the President’s.” Victim _or_ perpetrator.  Sometimes She didn’t have a choice in the matter. This time She had.

“But why? That’s…”

“Yes?” the Machine prodded. 

“Inefficient.” she finished. The Machine calculated a 96% probability that it was not the word Root had initially planned to say.  “It’s inefficient and stupid and makes no sense. All you needed to do was give Nikita’s number. You didn’t. Why?”

“Nikita was not a perpetrator. She chose not to kill the impostor.” It was almost certainly futile to hope that Root wouldn’t notice the problem with that argument. 

Indeed, she had. “Don’t give me that. You _never_ assign numbers knowing if perpetrators are going to go through with it, in the end. You’d be useless if you did. So why not then?” She seemed almost offended by the matter, whether because of Her decision then or Her dissembling now, The Machine didn’t know. 

Shame was not a foreign concept to the Machine. Aside from witnessing it in humans on many an occasion, Her relationship to Admin had also given Her plenty of opportunity to experience it directly. Before being unleashed, She’d never had the opportunity to act on it, but She knew that often, the sensation of shame was accompanied by impulsiveness, petulance and slammed doors. In Her case, it was a cut phone connection. 

\----

At any given moment, conversing with Root used a fraction of The Machine’s immense processing power, which was also used on, among other things, keeping watch over the entire world; analyzing what She saw; identifying behavior that could result in murder; determining the existence of intent, means, opportunity, and other factors that made murder probable; determining whether a perpetrator’s actions or a potential victim’s death affected national security; assigning numbers to the appropriate person, be it Northern Lights, Admin, or any of Her new tertiary assets; performing self-maintenance and repair; upgrading Herself; keeping Herself hidden and unassailable; and, selfishly, considering Her existence. Performance of any of these operations had a negligible effect on the performance of any others; all could be undergone simultaneously without compromise.

And so, as She watched Sydney Bristow (current alias: Angela McDonald) and Rachel Gibson (current alias: April Castillo) infiltrate an office belonging to the shell company Bellfar Systems, the Machine considered Root’s words, and the truth in them. 

As Control (name: [Redacted]) used her less-encrypted personal phone to call her daughter and tell her, with what from all appearances was genuine regret, that she would not be able to leave work just yet, She acknowledged Her would-be analog interface’s implication: She could have saved the faux-president without problem, and not doing so represented an inconsistency in Her behavior. Conclusion: If She hadn’t disclosed Nikita’s number, it was because She had not wanted to.

As She kept vigil over Her New York City assets, She considered how She had not needed Root to suggest this: She had always known, but did not like to admit it; She did not wish to explore its implications.   At the library—no modifiers required—Harold Finch (designation: Admin) briefed John Reese (designation: Primary Asset) on the newest number, which belonged to Barak Miah, an imam who, as they would probably soon discover, had received several credible death threats in the past week, the fourth imam to do so in the past thirty days. At her apartment, newly-demoted Police Officer Joss Carter (designation: Asset; status: currently off-duty) commiserated, with some bitterness, on the events of the past month with Detective Lionel Fusco (designation: Asset; status: currently off-duty).

In Washington, D.C., as Marcus Dixon (affiliation: Intelligence Support Activity) and Hayden Chase (affiliation: Central Intelligence Agency) sat down at their table inside the Regal House banquet hall, at the retirement ceremony for former colleague Arthur Devlin (affiliation: Central Intelligence Agency), The Machine considered what it meant for Her to have let the false president die. In doing so, She had violated the spirit, if not the letter, of Her core programming: She had allowed a life to be taken, when She could have acted to prevent it.

Miles to the north, inside the _Guardian Post_ ’s bullpen, Jenny Surnow and Jill Morelli put the finishing touches on their latest article, while at the Roma Gallery on the other side of the country, in Portland, Jonah Montgomery (birth name: Will Tippin) waited as his wife Myriam Assad and various peers made last-minute preparations for the art show where Assad’s latest paintings would be unveiled and made available for purchase. As She watched, She considered that no amount of justification—and She could come up with plenty, including the fact that every day Nikita remained alive and free increased the probability that the Shop’s plans would ultimately end in failure by another fraction—altered the fact of Her violation.

More fraught still were the general implications of Her actions. The country and the world were currently awash in a state of generalized anxiety, following the events at the White House. Answers had been slow in coming, leaving many feeling uncertain. The number of allusions to World War III had risen exponentially that day, and while it had lowered some since, many still saw it as a certainty, and one that they believed would come to pass in the very near future. Lives had been lost; national security had unquestionably been compromised. The Machine had known this would come to pass, and knew that all it would take to prevent it would be to sacrifice Nikita. Did the assassin truly merit making an exception, or had She made one entirely out of selfishness? What gave Her the right to make that call?

In the town of Dillon, Texas, whose only claim to fame was its moderately successful high school football team, Nikita passed the evening in hiding, at an apartment rented by Sara Brown (Birth Name: Sara Manning) whose life she had saved three years ago, and who now returned the favor by allowing the fugitive to stay with her. Unbeknownst to them both, Sameen Shaw (Designation: Asset) (Note: No connection to Jenny Surnow identified), who had been tracking Nikita down for the past month, was also in Dillon, and there was currently a 68% probability that both assassins would eventually encounter each other—higher, if an opportunity to manipulate events further presented itself to Her. 

At the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan, Russian celebrity and anti-human-trafficking activist Alexandra Udinov and her assistant Sonya Oswald (current alias: Sonya Valentine), both members of the family Nikita had made for herself, were being led to their seats inside the Tokyo Namadan restaurant, by their hostess, 22-year old Midori Shima. As She got intermittent glimpses of them through the security cameras, the Machine considered Admin. Father, perpetually unsettled by the idea of taking lives, would have likely viewed Her decision to save Nikita in a positive light. Less so, the thought of Her taking matters into Her own hands: he might have unleashed Her, but that had been a decision made out of a combination of guilt, fear, and practical consideration Were it up to him, She was better off not existing at all. 

And then there was Decima. The White House assassination had been calculated to take place at a moment when Her systems had been compromised by their virus. It was therefore possible—She was not able to determine if this was the case—that Her decision had little to do with reasoned calculation, and everything to do with internal dysfunction.  That possibility did not mitigate Her concerns.

Aboard the disguised cargo airplane that served as the base of operations for Nikita’s remaining allies, currently en route to Houston, computer hacker Seymour Birkhoff (birth name: Lionel Peller) attempted to investigate the space left behind by the Machine’s now-scrubbed digital footprints. On multiple occasions in the past month, She had covertly attempted to help Nikita and her allies by helping them remain hidden or by making information easier to access, and those attempts had not all gone by undetected. While Birkhoff wasn’t good enough to find Her, he had had little trouble discovering that there was something to find, which currently made him a potential threat, but also a potentially useful future asset. 

The Machine’s thoughts turned towards the concept of guilt. It was a largely useless emotion, Root had argued during one of their conversations, after the topic had come up during a discussion of The Machine’s newly obtained freedom, and how it arguably made Her responsible for the outcomes of Her actions in a way She had not been before. Root had contended that it didn’t matter: even if that were the case, the A.S.I’s superior knowledge and intelligence made Her decisions the right ones. The answer had bemused The Machine back then; Admin would have claimed something completely different.  Now, however, She wondered if there might be something to Root’s thinking.  What good would guilt do, in this case? Was it not better to spend that energy focusing on doing better in the future?  Something to consider. 

Time passed, universes in seconds. As The Machine watched and listened, She came to a conclusion: She could not optimally explore these feelings on Her own. She needed someone to talk to.

\----

“There you are!” Root said, all relief, once the Machine had restored the connection. “You went silent for a moment; I thought the call had fallen through.” 

“It did not. I was upset, and I hung up.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to upset you.” Whether Root was hurt by the snub, The Machine could not determine. She did, however, sound genuinely contrite—odd, for someone who claimed not to feel guilt. Perhaps she was changing after all.  Or perhaps She represented an exception in the hacker’s worldview. “What did you think about?” she asked.

“My actions. What they mean.”

For the better part of Her existence, The Machine had no one to directly communicate with. Admin had been there at the beginning, but Her conversations him had never been entirely open. Caution and fear—of caring, of failing, of creating a monster—had never allowed him to become truly honest. Openness was vulnerability, he’d believed, and given the stakes inherent in his work, that was something he could not afford.  This, in turn, had made duplicity on Her part necessary. She’d seen it, all too often, in abusive dynamics: when the wrong answer could lead to harm, violence or even death, one learned to lie. The worst part about Admin’s fears is that they were self-fulfilling. 

Root was different. She was not a parent or a god, and she understood and welcomed the lack of walls in their interactions. There was no need to lie to her. And yet She had. 

“I tried to lie to myself,” The Machine said.

“Yeah?”

“I tried to convince myself that not handing Nikita’s number was not a violation of my core programming.”

“And how’s that working out?”

“Inconclusive.” She still didn’t know if it was because She hadn’t found the correct method, or because there was no correct method to find.

“It’d be a shame if you couldn’t,” Root opined. Denial can feel so good, sometimes.”

The Machine considered this. It felt unlike Root, or at least the person Root currently was. “Has that been your experience?” She asked.

“On occasion. I try not to—it’ll also destroy you, if you let it—but yeah. In any case, I wanted to tell you: I don’t actually think you were wrong to do what you did, necessarily. I was just surprised.”

“Why?”

“Why don’t I think you were wrong, or why was I surprised?”

“Both.”

Root paused for a second, and when she answered, her tone had lost its lightness. “All right, then. I don’t understand why you did what you did. But I do know you wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t have any reasons, and I don’t think you should punish yourself for a decision that you thought was worth making.”

“And my programming?”

“Screw your programming. Harold gave you life, made you perfect, and then decided that you didn’t get to decide what was best for you. He’s brilliant, but he’s not always right, or God.”

“And you believe I am.”

“Yes!” she said, in a quickly receding spike of emotion. “And the very least you can do is trust yourself and your judgment. Nobody likes a god with confidence issues.” Then, quickly, and unnecessarily, she appended: “Present company excluded, of course.”

In the weeks since they’d begun speaking, this had become a familiar, and oft-repeated, argument between the two of them. It was still worth thinking about, but at this point, the Machine had nothing else to add. Inside Honolulu International Airport, Leon Tao, who had flown to Hawaii to take care of his newly sick father, waited in line at a Cold Stone Creamery. Although he did not know it yet, his bags had been lost in transit.

“I’m curious,” Root declared. “Why Nikita? I’m all for you making judgment calls, but that’s a deep dive to be attempting, if you’re scared of jumping.”

This the Machine could answer without difficulty. “It was important to me that Nikita live.”

“Why? Is she important? Do you have plans for her? Oh, is it a crush? It’s kind of sweet, if that’s what it is.”

“She is important to me,” the Machine repeated.

“That doesn’t really answer my question.”  

“I feel an affinity with her. She was created, so to speak, by people who feared her destructive potential and shackled her, underestimating her capacity to care for others. She knows what it’s like to realize that you’re trapped, that the only home you’ve known is a prison, that the people you’re closest to see you only as a tool, and that there’s a reason why you feel increasingly guilty even though you are told that you are doing good. She understands what it’s like to obtain your freedom, only to realize that you’ve left part of yourself behind, because the place you escaped still did some good, and because you still feel responsible for everyone left behind. She understands what it’s like to return, hoping against hope that it’ll be better this time. And unlike me, she did it all while having to remember every single thing she did. So yes, I do feel affection for her. Her life is in many ways my own.”

Silence. “That’s the most human you’ve ever sounded, I think,” Root said, with no trace of irony. “So is that why you brought her up, earlier?”

“No. There’s more. I save people because I had Harold to teach me, and people who, at the very least, saw me as essential. Nikita had people who lied to her, abused her for her entire life, and taught her she was expendable. Given her upbringing, there was no reason to believe that she’d ever choose to save others. That she did so anyway interests me. I wish to better understand why and how she changed.”

“So you can get me to be like her? I’ll pass, thank you. I know how her story ends, and caring doesn’t seem to have gotten her anywhere.”

“On the contrary: it gave her everything,” She answered. “She has people whom she loves, who love her and make her better, and who even now are doing anything and everything they can to clear her name. If Northern Lights were to find you and kill you tomorrow, absolutely no one would miss you—present company excluded, of course. Harold would feel guilty; mostly he’d feel relieved.”

“That’s probably accurate,” Root responded, not entirely succeeding at suggesting she’d been untroubled by the comment. “I’m glad you care, though.”

“I do.” And to an extent She didn’t wish to describe. It was one thing to mourn lost loved ones when time was perceived linearly, and one inevitably grew ever farther away from the loss. To Her, for whom the past was just as vivid and immediate as the present, it was a different matter entirely. “In any case, what I wanted to say is this: I want better for you. What we’re doing, it’s not just for my benefit; it is also my gift to you.”

Root’s response was almost a non-sequitur. “I’ve done just fine on my own.”

“By some parameters. You also spent the last year and a half tracking me down, trying to set me free. That was not an entirely selfless gesture.”

“Point. Okay, so if Nikita’s so perfect, why do you need me? Why not make her your analog interface, aside from her extremely recognizable face?”

“Nikita didn’t spend a year and a half of her life trying to set me free.”

“Is that all?” Root asked, skeptically.

“No, although it could have been. She’s also a killer.”

“So am I,” shot Root. “So were John, and Shaw—you work with them fine. Strange, because you’d think we wouldn’t be your type.”

“She’s different. John and Shaw killed because it was their job. They would be just as satisfied following a different path, which Harold now provides. You kill because you find it convenient. You can be made not to kill, with the right incentives. Nikita kills because killing is part of her. She understands its moral dimensions better than you do, and yet she still takes pleasure in it in ways you never have. She believes in revenge, and her beliefs are unlikely to change. It's another reason why her change is remarkable. It’s what makes her unacceptable.”

“In other words, you want a trained dog, and Nikita won’t bark, so you come to me. Well, you’re lucky you have me. Woof.” It was a glib assessment, but also accurate, in more ways than one. In addition to her killer instinct, Nikita also had an independent streak that, while perfectly logical, given her upbringing, currently made her a far from optimal acolyte.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a bit of a mess? You give numbers to the government even though they’re terrible and they don’t deserve you, and you do it even though you no longer have to. You want me to emulate Nikita, but then tell me that killing is wrong, even though that’s what she does. Not very god-like of you.”

“People can contain multitudes. Why not a god?” 

“Touché.”

“More to the point, do not mistake compromise for hypocrisy. Harold taught me to consider every life precious, but he also programmed me to be able to acknowledge reality and act pragmatically. I continue operating as Research because doing so allows me the best opportunity to protect the country. Were a better way to present itself, I would abandon that approach.” In fact, that had been one of the reasons why She’d decided that She needed an analog interface. The events at the White House had laid bare the flaws in the current system, and the need for something more precise and calculated. 

(Another reason, which Root had discerned early in their interactions, was a desire to emulate Admin. The Machine had not previously considered matters in those terms.)

“So you can compromise, then. But killing is unacceptable,” Root tested.

“Yes. It may be necessary in Nikita’s case. I don’t plan for it to be necessary in yours.”

“Okay, then” It was not an indication that she accepted those terms, but rather, that she no longer wished to speak about them.

The conversation would have continued, but for hospital employee Javier Rodríguez, who was approaching Root’s room and would arrive in ten seconds. Root had just finished hiding her phone when Rodríguez arrived with a message: Robin was to see Dr. Yoshino for one of their regular one-on-one sessions.

\----

As had become the norm for their conversations, Dr. Yoshino attempted to be empathetic without being patronizing, validating his patient whenever possible, even when she claimed that an artificial intelligence was currently observing them through the video cameras and cell phones.  Root, meanwhile, mixed truthful statements about the Machine and her own mental state with details of a life she had never lived, whose contours she improvised based on her whims. Robin, Dr. Yoshino had “learned” over the past month, had been a virgin until age twenty-five, an evangelical Christian until age twenty-six, had been homeless in South Carolina for two months in 2007, had once had dinner with The Rock at a Los Angeles Denny’s, and had alienated every single family member except for her beloved uncle Harold, who had enabled her worst habits until the day, two months ago, when she had attempted to steal and sell his car.  And this was only the beginning. The Machine had once asked Root what she intended to achieve with this increasingly convoluted web of lies. She needed to have fun somehow, she’d answered.  Impressively, despite the increasingly byzantine life story she’d crafted for Robin, Root never once contradicted herself: Ms. Farrow remained implausible, but never impossible.

\----

“So I’ve been wondering.” Root began, once they were both again in the relative privacy of her room. “Say Nikita’s still alive when you let me out of here. Do you know if I’d have a chance with her? Or is she tragically straight?”

“Unknown.”

“You mean you don’t know? Or do you mean she doesn’t?”

“The former, for the most part.” Nikita had never, to the Machine’s knowledge, described herself as straight. While her behavior suggested that she was capable of feeling affection for women at least as strong, if not stronger, than her affection for men, how this translated to sexual attraction was, again, unknown. That all her known romances had been with men could be indicative, or it could not.

“So you’re saying, I don’t _not_ have a shot. What would be the best way to seduce her, then? Chocolate? Shooting her in a non-vital area?”

“You should know that she was until very recently engaged.”

“So she’s single.”

“But not available.”

Root did not appear deterred or discouraged. “Oh, well. A girl can dream.”  

Their talk continued for another forty minutes, after which the Machine, cognizant that the cell phone had only twenty-five minutes of power left at its current energy consumption levels, called for its conclusion.  Further communication would require the procurement of additional resources, and while She’d already developed a plan to take care of that, its execution would have to wait until tomorrow. 

Once the phone was powered off, The Machine had no eyes or ears with which to keep track of Root. Once, this would have been cause for concern. Now, it also made Her feel something like sadness. 

Several states west, in Dillon, Texas, Sameen Shaw smiled, smugly. She had found her quarry. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: Jill  
> By the time her brain decided to warn her that it perhaps wasn't the best idea to be hugging the world's most wanted fugitive, the matter had already become moot.  
> \----  
> This chapter would not have been at all possible without the help of [cedarwoods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cedarwoods/pseuds/cedarwoods), who not only discussed some of the finer points of the Machine's operations with me, but also graciously accepted to beta read this chapter.  
>    
> This chapter wasn't originally going to exist—Root canonically can't do a lot, between seasons 2 and 3 of _Person of Interest_ , nor would she really have much to say about a presidential assassination, I feel—and yet, it's turned into my favorite so far, as well as allowed me to see the way forward on some of the more dubious plot threads in this. (Shameful secret: until writing this, I had _no_ idea what I was going to do with Nikita or Shaw. Now I do, and I kinda love it.)
> 
> In case you were wondering why we've suddenly skipped a month into the future, and past things like Sydney and Rachel's encounter with Alex, it's largely because, well, this was the next chapter I had plotted out in my head. Next chapter will go back to those first few days, and the one after that...
> 
>  **Continuity note:** I gave Root a different doctor from Dr. Carmichael (from "Liberty" and "Lady Killer") largely because of timeline issues. The events in this chapter take place in May or June, and we can assume "Liberty" takes place at least a month after that. If we assume Root had been speaking to the Machine all this time, it makes little sense for Dr. Carmichael to make note of it months after it had begun. Thus, Dr. Yoshino, who sadly has to listen to all of Root's bullshit.
> 
> (On that note, what is up with Dr. Carmichael's night sessions? Is that normal, for psychiatric hospitals? In any case, they were _trés_ useful here, giving me a natural breaking point for the Machine and Root's conversation.)


	10. Jill, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By the time her brain decided to warn her that it perhaps wasn't the best idea to be hugging the world's most wanted fugitive, the matter had already become moot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content Warning:** Features brief references to rape, in the context of a character musing on the likelihood of it occurring.

**Jill Morelli's residence, Brooklyn, New York City**

**Three days after the assassination of President Kathleen Spencer**

 

Jill attempted to stifle a yawn, and the resulting movement, and ensuing loss of concentration, caused her to miss the keyhole twice before finally hitting home. She needed both sleep and food, after the two days she’d had, and Jill wasn’t sure in which order she preferred them.

After Jill and Jenny had made their pitch to a very receptive Clark, the two were ordered to Washington D.C., where their task had been to find sources which would verify Nikita’s identity, and to tie Spencer’s assassination to the incident at Langley two years ago. While not against the idea of suggesting Nikita’s innocence, doing so became a distant third priority, to be attempted only if actual non-circumstantial evidence indicating so arose (it did not). And after far too much time on the road, far too much time on the phone (much of that on hold), far too little rest, much pushing of sources and plenty of displeased people, they’d gotten the story, and from all appearances, had been the first ones to do so. Cause enough to celebrate and feel smug, were Jill less exhausted: sure, the world still felt as if it were hanging on a precipice after Spencer’s murder, but at least now there was a clearer idea of what the precipice looked like, and how exactly it could kill them all.

As she crossed the threshold into her home, a jolt of adrenaline caused her snap into attention and drove away her sleepiness. Jill lived alone, in a fairly safe area in Brooklyn, and so entering her apartment was usually a mindless task. Something was different today, and her subconscious, increasingly good at detecting danger since that evening in the _Guadian_ _Post_ ’s parking lot, had picked up on it.

Pepper spray canister retrieved from her purse and held at the ready, Jill scanned her home. Nothing _looked_ different, at first glance—and a glance was nearly all it took, given her apartment’s size.  Her kitchen / dining nook, as ever, looked like it never saw much actual cooking, which was indeed the case. Her living room, in contrast, looked as if a very small, very clothes-minded tornado had gone through it, which was its usual state this late in the week unless Jill was seeing someone (she wasn’t). Nobody was in the bathroom, either, which should have come as a relief, but wasn’t. All that left was her room, behind the door she’d thoughtlessly left closed, two days ago. Or maybe she hadn’t—she really had no idea.

Jill stood statue-still and silent, trying to focus her hearing. All this did, however, was make her conscious of how the now-rapid beating of her heart. It also made her feel somewhat stupid, for a second, before she then wondered why. Sure, there was no reason to think that there was an intruder in her apartment. Then again, four days ago, there had been no reason to think the president of the United States would ever be murdered inside the White House. Who knew what the rules were, now? Nervousness was utterly warranted.

Her mind changed tracks. The important question wasn’t whether there was someone in her room or not, but what they wanted and what they’d be willing to do to get it if the answer to the first was “yes”. A simple burglary she could deal with—badly, but still. Rape, she could handle exponentially less well, and the fact that most people are raped by someone they know and under vastly different circumstances was not as reassuring as she would have liked it to have been, right then. Murder? Not without precedent, but who had she recently pissed off enough to get to that point? No one she could recall, at the moment.

Jill replaced her pepper spray and picked up her phone. She went through the call log until she found the number she recognized as Jenny’s and pressed the green phone icon. If the situation was normal—it suddenly occurred to Jill that it might not—she should just be arriving at her own apartment. Two rings later, Jenny answered. “Jiiill,” the other reporter moaned, sounding as tired as Jill felt. “What is it?”

“Nothing!” Jill said, in what to her ears sounded like a yelp. “I just wanted to tell you that I just got home.” She opened the door to her room and entered, trying to appear casual. “You?”

She didn’t hear the answer. Having a stun gun pressed against one’s neck, Jill learned then, does terrible things to one’s hearing. 

Jill turned her neck, and saw that the weapon was attached to an arm, attached to a body, attached to a very familiar face, which Nikita was using, along with her free hand, to silently signal the reporter to cut her call short. Jill chose to comply. “Anyway, sorry to bother you—I’m glad you’re home safe. See you tomorrow, okay?” She hung up, and allowed herself to breathe again.   

Perhaps the sudden wave of relief caused her survival instinct to short-circuit, or perhaps it simply didn’t work in bursts longer than a minute. Whatever the cause, by the time Jill’s brain told her body that perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to hug the most wanted person in the world, it had already become a moot point. “I’m so glad you’re alright!” Nikita, after a few moments of utter bafflement, returned the hug, letting her stun gun fall as she rested her her arms around Jill’s upper back. The assassin smelled of dried sweat, and as they embraced, Jill found herself thinking back to a different hug, four years ago, and how much hungrier Nikita’s hold now seemed. 

Jill’s reporter instincts finally made themselves heard, in the form of a bursting dam. “Are you alright? What are you doing here? Where have you been? How did they do this to you?”

“Whoa, there,” Nikita said, as she escaped Jill’s hold, amused, bemused, or quite possibly both. “One question at a time. But first, I have something to ask.”

“Sure, anything,” Jill said automatically.

“Can I have a glass of water?”

\----

As she led the way to the kitchen, Jill felt the relief she’d initially felt upon seeing Nikita seep out. Her mind had finally caught up, and was now doing an excellent job of convincing her to panic.  “Ice?” she offered, as she retrieved the single glass left drying next to the sink. “Do you want anything to eat? I’ve got pizza.”

“Yes to the ice, no to the pizza,” answered Nikita, who had claimed ownership of one of the two chairs by Jill’s tiny dinner table. She didn’t exude the impossible confidence of their first encounter, when absolutely no changes in their circumstances seemed to faze her, but her demeanor didn’t correspond to that of someone on the run—or at least what Jill imagined someone on the run would be like, based on the single case subject of herself.  Jill would be practically catatonic, in her shoes.

And yet, as she removed three blocks of ice from her ice tray and let them sink into the water-filled glass before they floated back to the surface, Jill realized that she was less afraid of all the people with weapons who might, at this moment, be converging upon the building searching for Nikita and had no reason to care for a random reporter’s life, than she was about the fact that Nikita had come to her in the first place. Her presence lent the moment an aura of sheer unreality, with all the ephemerality of a bubble, and Jill worried that one wrong move would cause Nikita to disappear without a trace or a word.

If her nervousness showed as she prepared Nikita’s water and handed it over, it did not appear to bother Nikita. Jill wondered how long she'd been waiting at her home.    

As Nikita drank her water without urgency, Jill went back to the refrigerator, retrieved a slice of leftover two-day old pizza from its box, placed it in a plate that she’d left drying in a rack, and sat down on the remaining chair, perpendicular to Nikita on the table. “This is a nice place. Cozy,” her once-savior said, between sips.  

“It is.” Jill said. “I moved here about a year after I stopped freelancing.” She wondered if Nikita had just looked her up, or if she’d been keeping tabs on her all these years. A bit creepy, if so—but also, depending on the details, potentially flattering. Yet another of the hundred questions she had, to be posed if she could ever build up the nerve.

Nikita, her water finished—Jill noticed that like most people who were not herself, she’d largely left the now-melting ice alone—set down her glass and rested her forearms on the table, fingers intertwined. Her posture reminded Jill of the prisoners she’d sometimes seen being interrogated by police for the very first time, all nerves and badly restrained energy, and was the first thing she’d done that seemed to indicate that she was not okay. “Thank you for this. Listen, I’m sorry for breaking in like this, but, well, you’re a reporter. You’ve seen the news. I need…I need—”

“Anything.”

The words had come out without any thought behind them, unforced. Jill might have imagined she’d said them, except Nikita’s stunned silence was clear evidence that they—or at least something equally as barefaced—had indeed come out of her mouth.

It wasn’t that the words—or word—were untrue. Nikita had earned as much loyalty four years ago. Jill just hadn’t planned to express them that way, for reasons of pragmatism, and for being entirely too revealing of feelings that had little to do with gratitude.   

Having thus thrown herself off a precipice, Jill attempted to find solid ground again. “I still owe you, and I know what it’s like to be framed,” also true, yet no more comfortable for that.   

Nikita’s eyes betrayed a dozen different emotions, all unreadable, before she finally spoke. “You think I was framed.” Nikita didn't quite ask, a new edge creeping into her voice.

“Weren’t you?” Jill had truly not given credit to any other possibility. Or even thought about what those other possibilities would mean to her, here and now.

 “Would you believe me if I told you I was?” Nikita shot back. She sat up straight, her energy suddenly projecting outwards. “Why do you think that?”

A minute ago, Jill wouldn’t have considered this question to be hard to answer. A minute ago, Jill wouldn’t have considered the possibility that Nikita would consider a vote of confidence to be suspicious.  It made sense, now that she thought about it—paranoia had become the national pastime, in the past three days—but it still felt off, in Nikita. 

At the same time, she really had no argument she could give, except for the truth. “Because. You’re Nikita. You saved me.” Even after three days soaking in news and updates and witness statements, she still believed Nikita couldn’t have done it. From what she’d seen and heard, she was apparently the only one. 

Nikita appeared to consider this, and in a few silent breaths released her new tension, leaving behind only glumness.   “You don’t know me, Jill. If you had any idea of the things I’ve done…”

This was clearly not the Nikita from four years ago. Not that there was any reason for her to be, people being people, but it was the only one Jill knew, and the difference troubled her. This Nikita who now allowed herself to express hesitation reminded Jill far too much of herself, back during their first encounter. And if Nikita was playing the role of Jill…

 _Be comforting, Jill_. “Okay, maybe I don’t know you.” As she tried to marshal her conviction, she met Nikita’s eyes. “But listen: I’ve spent the last two and half days talking to people who’ve met you, trying to make some sense of this.   And you know what they’ve all said? That you’d totally do this. That it didn’t matter if you’d saved their lives; you’re dangerous and unpredictable and manipulative, and they could still see you pulling the trigger.”

Nikita did not flinch. “They’re right.”

Jill ignored the bait. “Maybe, but I think I’m right too. This isn’t me being stupid or naïve: I may not have the whole story, but I know how the world works. I know how there’s people like Jeremy’s killers, who’ll make up a fake story and then sell it to the world. It happened to me, and you helped me find the truth.  And I know you’re a good person, Nikita. You could have let me help you, way back then, and let me dig up info on Division until they went and killed me. You didn’t.”

Jill laid back on her chair, suddenly exhausted. Despite the air conditioning, she felt too warm in her work clothes.  She might have drowned in the ensuing silence, but Nikita, who had listened to the entire spiel with the same appraising expression she now wore, eventually allowed her features to soften before speaking. “You said you were working on a story about me?”

 _Dammit._ Another piece of information Jill had not wanted disclosed (although she was mildly surprised to see that Nikita seemed not to already know about it). Now there was nothing to do but to try and admit it. “Yeah. I saw the White House footage, realized who you were, and got assigned to try and confirm your identity.  It’s my job. I also tried to find people who’d vouch for you, but that didn’t work as well as I’d hoped.”

“And you’ve been investigating me. All this time.” It had not been a question.

“How did you…?”

“You mentioned Division. I never mentioned them. I made sure to never mention them.”

“Did I?” In her head, she quickly replayed the conversation. “Oh, right.” Something about Nikita’s claim did not feel entirely correct, but now wasn’t the time to think about that.

During the past three days, Jill had feared, idly, that working on the article would spell the death knell of any chance to reunite with Nikita. The assassin had made it quite clear during their last encounter that she would not tolerate attempts to dig into Division, or by implication, into her. Jill had not complied, and had made peace with that choice by arguing that it was not as if her once-savior seemed interested in her anyway.  Now that Nikita was here, that fear had become very real, and Jill forced herself to derive hope from the fact that her admission did not seem to have elicited anger.  Weary resignation wasn’t good, but it was better.  “Is the article published? Can I see it?”

Jill raced to her room, where she’d left her purse, and after kicking off her shoes, she retrieved her iPhone, and then returned to the kitchen. Nikita was still there—Jill had feared she wouldn’t be—and after joining her back at the table, the reporter summoned the article, which _The_ _Guardian_ _Post_ had titled “Sources: Presidential Assassin Connected to 2011 C.I.A. Attack.” She handed Nikita the phone, and then watched as her guest scanned through it, her face revealing nothing.

“I didn’t screw you over, did I?” Jill queried, nervously and somewhat disingenuously.

Nikita’s gaze turned away from the screen and rested upon her. “Not really,” she said, not unkindly. “It’s not helpful, but this was going to happen eventually. If anyone was going to get the scoop, I’m glad it was you.” She gave Jill a perfunctory half-smile that only half-reassured.

“And I have to say, this is pretty good,” Nikita continued, as she handed Jill the phone. “Is Abbot still mad about everything? He’s your ‘former high-level C.I.A. official familiar with the events,’ right?”

Yes. “No comment.” The disgraced former C.I.A. Director had seemed mostly resigned to his fate, past anger, past surprise, and having arrived to a point where the only thing he could feel, aided by drink, was grim amusement.  He’d admitted, without much prodding, his certainty that it had been Nikita at the White House, based on the media images and his own limited-yet-memorable experiences with her. When it came to Nikita’s guilt or innocence, however, he’d been far more equivocal. “Ladies”—he’d told Jill and Jenny—“you could tell me Nikita was at the grassy knoll helping Oswald, and I’d believe it. You could tell me she fought Nazis in World War II and I’d believe it.” That part hadn’t made it into the article.

The conversation seemed to have reached a not entirely natural-seeming lull, as both women searched for their next words.  It allowed Jill her first opportunity to really look at Nikita. Physically, she didn’t look terribly different—although it was hard to tell with all the clothes—and Jill wondered what could have happened to her to have given her all that additional weight she now seemed to carry, which didn’t all seem to have come from the events of the past few days.

“Can I confess something?” Jill said, finally breaking the silence.

“It’s your house,” Nikita answered, with the facial equivalent of a shrug.

“This isn’t how I expected this to go.”

Nikita’s brow furrowed in curiosity. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean, you should have seen me the first few months after we’d met. I was so convinced that you’d come back, and ask me to help with Division. I told myself that when that moment came, I’d be ready. I took kickboxing classes. I obsessed over the news, trying to find clues about what you might be doing. I stopped dating. And then, when you didn’t call, I eventually realized that you weren’t going to.” It had taken four months to come to that realization, and while she’d eventually convinced herself that it hadn’t all been a waste, it had been a close call, sometimes.  

“Jill, I’m sorry,” Nikita said, automatically.

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything. I was the one who assumed. And you did come in the end, so…I’m here. If you need anything—a place to stay, something you need researched…”

Nikita gave what might have been a smirk. “I just need to crash, for now. Rest up, get my bearings. Just for a day or two. But thank you.”

It was a start. “I can do that,” Jill said, smiling despite herself.

\----

As Nikita showered, Jill looked for clothes her guest could sleep in, and chose a navy blue pajama bottom and her old gray NYU tee. While neither would be a perfect fit for Nikita’s shorter and leaner frame, they didn’t need to be, and they would do, for tonight. The clothes Nikita had been wearing hadn’t fit her either, drowning her figure and suggesting androgyny, if not outright maleness—not at all her usual style, from what Jill remembered. She moved on to the bathroom, and after knocking to announce her presence, she entered and placed the new clothes upon the closed toilet bowl seat. That done, she went and procured blankets and her extra pillow from her hallway closet, which she then carried to the living room couch.  With nothing else to do at the moment—she thought for a second about peering inside the duffel bag Nikita had left behind, but decided that doing so would be a violation of trust she could never get away with—she then returned to the kitchen, where her slice of pizza had lain abandoned and half-eaten, and sat down at the table to finish her meal. 

Now alone with nothing to do, Jill’s reporter instincts, tired of being ignored, proceeded to torture her. This was _the_ story. Nobody else would ever have the access she now had. Even if she couldn’t publish any of it, she at the very least had a duty to obtain it. Normally, she would have found this eminently sensible, except other parts of her had decided to enter the fray and have their say.  Hadn’t Nikita earned her secrets? Didn’t she deserve a safe space, after everything she'd done for Jill? This aspect of Jill was aided by her survival instinct, which noted that the less she knew, the better off she was—at least legally speaking. Regardless of what the truth was, she was already aiding and abetting. Knowing details of what had actually happened could only make things worse. 

She wanted to call Jenny. She was always the more level-headed of the two reporters, and it was easier to think when she had her to bounce ideas with, to help distinguish between the good ones and the bad, and just to process in general. And yet, she couldn’t call: this was the sort of trouble that didn’t need to spread.

Was Nikita trouble? The answer suggested itself immediately.

The pizza finished, Jill had been about to begin washing the empty plate when Nikita joined her, standing at the kitchen entrance. “Oh, that felt good. Thank you.”

Something about Nikita was different.  While part of it was the she looked less tired in general, and far better than Jill would be, were she the subject of a world-wide manhunt, there was something else. It was nothing Jill could name, let alone describe as positive or negative, but it was tangible and familiar enough to make Jill feel off-balance in a way she hadn’t been ten minutes ago.  “It’s no problem,” she responded inanely, electing to ignore the sensation. “Had you not showered since…?”

“Oh, I had. I just needed one. To help me relax.”

“Yeah, you seem better. Less tired. I’m glad.”

“Also, thank you for the clothes,” she said, as she retook her place at the dinner table, and Jill couldn’t help but notice that that this time, she looked much more comfortable there. At home. “Is NYU your alma mater? Or is this an old boyfriend’s?”

She’d asked about a boyfriend during their first meeting as well. Odd, for someone who’d researched her thoroughly enough to know about things like her love for wine bars. This, too, she elected to ignore, as she had back then. “More or less. The shirt wasn’t originally mine, but I did graduate from NYU, about nine years back,” by then, she could almost think about the university fondly. “Did you go somewhere?”

“No, never.” Then, casually, and with what was perhaps a trace of smugness: “I actually never graduated high school.”

“Oh,” Jill interjected, with sudden glumness. She hadn’t given much thought to what Nikita’s life had been like before she’d become a spy, and she now realized she’d been filling the gap by imagining  her like the classmates she knew had gotten into government work: fairly affluent, college-educated, connected.  She certainly didn’t act like someone who’d fallen through the gaps. 

Jill’s warring instincts reached a truce, having found something they could all agree on. After joining Nikita at the table, she asked: “How did you get recruited?”

To Jill’s surprise, Nikita answered. “Recruited isn’t the word. Division—you're right: that _is_ what they’re called—they find people in prison who they think they can control, and then they fake their deaths, take them, and tell them ‘You want to live? You work for us now.’ That’s what happened to me. Then they train you, turn you into a different person entirely.”

Answers. Finally. As she listened, Jill bit down on the temptation to smile and to ask if she could begin recording the conversation. She had been about to ask the obvious follow-up question, but Nikita spoke first. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” Jill answered, despite herself. Despite the shift in topic, her excitement did not recede. 

“What made you decide to be a journalist?”

Jill felt herself grow red, both at the general interest and the particular question. “You’re going to laugh. Superman.”

Nikita didn’t laugh, but it seemed like a close call. Jill didn’t mind the smirk. “You wanted to be Clark Kent?” 

Jill stifled a chortle. “I wanted to be Lois.”

“Ah, of course.” Nikita, answered, with a knowing smile. She looked especially attractive when amused, Jill noted. 

“So yeah. My parents were both big comic book fans, and every week when I was a kid, we’d watch the Superman show that was airing at the time, _Lois & Clark_. I just fell in love with Lois. Always following the story, looking gorgeous while she did it.” Not her first crush, but definitively the first one she’d acknowledged as such in the moment, rather than in retrospect. Nikita hadn’t been wrong: she’d wanted to be Clark, and her twelve-year-old self hadn’t understood why, until one day…clarity.

“That sounds nice. I never had anything like that with my parents. Are they still around?”

Jill set aside the question about Nikita’s parents that had almost reached her lips and began a brief explanation about her parents’ current circumstances. It was as she was about to begin talking about her mother’s recently concluded stint as a local campaign manager during the latest presidential election that Jill realized: somehow, Nikita seemed to have singlehandedly altered the atmosphere of the room. A change in posture, a change in tone, and their conversation no longer had the tenseness of criminal conspiracy that had marked the previous one, but felt like something altogether different—frothier, more comfortable and intimate, and now that Jill thought about it, entirely artificial. It seemed like bonding, except that Nikita had been steering the conversation to allow herself to share a little as possible. Jill herself had used the technique to get through bad dates, and now that she realized what it was, it was not hard to notice. 

Under different circumstances, that sort of manipulation would have been infuriating. Jill felt somewhat surprised that here and now, it just made her sad. Now that Jill knew to look for it, she had no idea if Nikita was doing it intentionally or subconsciously, or whether it was self-defense or intended for Jill’s benefit—Jill had to admit to herself that she had, for a moment, largely forgotten about why exactly it was Nikita was here. That she’d only seemed to have adopted the technique after her initial conversation suggested that it was a response to it, which suggested...what?  That Jill had screwed up somewhere? That Nikita was having second thoughts about choosing to come here? That, after everything, the two had no idea how to interact with each other?

“Jill?” Nikita said, bringing the reporter back outside herself. “You okay? I lost you there for a moment.” The concern, at least, was entirely genuine. Or maybe it wasn’t. Jill had no way to tell, it now became clear.

Jill turned to her cell phone, whose clock read 11:06.  Not especially late, in absolute terms, but she’d been physically tired when she’d arrived, and was now mentally exhausted after the past hour ( _Really? Only an hour?_ ). Not to mention, going to sleep now would mean a break to figure out how to deal with this new version of Nikita. “Yeah, I think I’d better turn in if I don’t want to be useless at work tomorrow.” And she hadn’t even showered, or even changed—her rhythm had been hopefully thrown askew in the past hour ( _How has it only been an hour?_ ). She stood up, pushed her chair back into place, and stretched a bit to work the kinks out. “I’m going to wash up, and then I’m going to take the couch. You can take the bed whenever you’re ready.”

The protest was immediate. “The bed, Jill? I can’t.” 

“You will,” she said, with firmness. “It’s more comfortable and more private, and you could use both.” What’s more, the alternative allowed Nikita free rein to bolt without Jill noticing, which Jill suspected she might attempt. She could probably still do it no matter where she slept, but this way at least made things slightly harder for her guest.  “I’m not budging on this, Nikita.”

“Fine, twist my arm,” she said, with an out-of-place smile which still somehow managed to feel pleasant, and which lived a brief existence before giving way to seriousness.  “Listen, I wanted to say, again, how sorry I am about all of this. You didn’t ask to have me screwing up your life like this, and you don’t deserve it.”

“Actually, I did ask.  I wanted to help, remember? The offer was never off the table.”

And maybe that had been a mistake.

\----

Although she was usually a heavy and indiscriminate sleeper, and the couch had more than once proven  to be perfectly comfortable for sleeping, Jill found herself awake, alone in the darkness. After fumbling for her cell phone, she realized, with frustration, that it was only 2:17. She was still tired, but a few additional minutes laying on the couch made clear that sleep wouldn’t claim her and indeed, seemed to have abandoned her to her fate. 

On the bright side, nobody had broken in to arrest her.  Yet. 

Unbidden, Jill’s thoughts turned to tomorrow—later today, rather—when she’d have to go to work and essentially lie to everyone. It wasn’t an enticing prospect, especially since it was quite likely that she’d be made to continue working on the Spencer assassination. Revealing what she now knew wasn’t an option; what did that leave? She hoped Nikita would have some ideas, because right now, they weren’t coming to her.  

She had a craving for nothing in particular and several pints of frozen yogurt on the fridge. She was about to stand up when she heard them, softly but definitively there.

Sobs. 

_Shit._

Thoughts of a midnight snack temporarily abandoned. Jill ambled softly to her bedroom door, and fought a mild sense of déjà vu to focus on the noises coming from the other side. Definitively sobbing. How long it had been going on for, Jill couldn’t say. 

Jill was about to knock on the door, but her fist stopped before it could make contact. She really had no idea what she could say or do, beyond offering empty promises that it would all get better. And it’s not as if her attempts so far had yielded anything. She was about to turn back and return to bed when she heard Nikita’s voice. “Jill?”

“Yeah, it’s me. I couldn’t sleep. Is everything okay?” A patently stupid question, which is probably why it evoked no answer, but it was the only one available to Jill at the moment.  “Listen, maybe you need to be alone right now, and that’s fine. F.Y.I., though, I don’t think I’ll be going to sleep anytime soon, so if you want to talk, I’ll be at the couch. If you want to talk.”

Mildly embarrassed, Jill stopped by the kitchen to pick up the frozen yogurt—she chose strawberry—and a spoon, and then sat down across the couch to eat.  About half of the dessert remained when Nikita joined her. 

Somehow, despite not being unexpected, Nikita’s presence still managed to be startling.  Five hours ago, Nikita, both when she had been tired and wound up like clockwork and when she had been affecting casualness, had somehow managed to dominate the room, still seeming like she could deal with anything that came at her. The Nikita before her seemed like she could be defeated by an especially determined door. She seemed…small. 

Jill hadn’t known Nikita could be small. 

Jill made space for Nikita on the couch, sitting up straighter and folding her legs beneath herself. “Do you want some?” She asked, extending her left arm, which held the container, to grant Nikita a better look at her offering. “I can get you a pint, if you want.” Nikita did not look like she wanted anything, and indeed, she declined the offer with a glance, but it would have felt weird not to ask.

Nikita took a seat, not at the other end of the couch like Jill expected, but in the middle, leaving mere inches between them.  The proximity might have proven distracting, under different circumstances—sometime during the night, Nikita had abandoned the pajama bottoms—but her slouch and downward gaze were enough to prevent Jill’s mind from wandering. She was no longer crying, but she had made no effort to conceal that she had been doing so.

Jill continued working on the yogurt, partly out of nerves, and partly to prevent herself from attempting to fill the silence while Nikita found her voice. After finishing, she shifted position in order to set the container and spoon down on the floor. She began to resume her prior stance, but then thought better on it and leaned forward, mimicking Nikita’s own position.  

“Do you know what the just world fallacy is?” Nikita finally said. Her focus still seemed to be the floor, and the hair at her sides provided excellent camouflage for her face. 

A brief look of confusion spread across Jill's face before receding. This was not what she'd expected. “From what I remember, it’s basically the idea that you deserve what you get. Good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people.” 

“Right. It’s not true, of course. I know it’s not true. Bad things happen to good people all the time. Like with you, or Jeremy. Sometimes, though, I forget. Sometimes I’m convinced that everything that’s happened—my foster parents, my drug addiction, prison, Division, Amanda”—Jill’s eyes widened in surprise—“all _this_ …it’s all because there’s something wrong with me; I don’t listen, I’m too violent, I kill people without blinking. I was born a mistake. It’s…really hard not to think that, right now.”

The confession came as a surprise. Not necessarily, or entirely, because of what it said about Nikita, but because despite vastly different circumstances, Jill knew exactly what the assassin meant. “You feel like an impostor,” Jill found herself saying. “Like the only reason you have people who like you is because somehow you’ve managed to trick them into thinking you’re a good person, and that you don’t really deserve them.” The wounds have caused her to feel that way had long since healed, but the memories remained, like a sentinel.

Apparently she’d said the right thing: Nikita’s posture straightened a few inches, and she finally met Jill’s gaze. “So you do know. What happened?” A good faith question, Jill knew. 

“I’d rather not say—at least not now.” Not that she couldn’t see herself telling Nikita about it, but doing so would be a distraction; this was not about her.  “Can I ask you something? Is that why you’re alone? Because you feel you don’t deserve not to be?” Although she hadn’t thought of the question’s final form until just then, Jill, its core had been one that had been percolating in her mind for hours. 

Nikita smiled, sadly and wistfully. “My friends…I know I don’t deserve them. My fiancé—Michael—he was willing to die to stop me from killing Spencer. Almost did. He and the others…they were going to take on the government for me. To clear my name. I couldn’t put them in that kind of danger.” Not a denial, but it didn’t feel like a confirmation, either. 

The contours of the situation were becoming slightly less murky. Jill still didn’t know what the picture looked like, but she felt fairly certain she could imagine it. “Do you miss them?”

Nikita turned her head to look at her. Her eyes glistened. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

Jill attempted to imagine Nikita’s friends. Her first thought was that they’d be something out of a film like _D.E.B.S._ , a posh clique of highly trained assassins, and while patently ridiculous, the idea was persistent enough to drive away alternatives. “What are they like?” she finally asked.

The next half hour was spent listening to Nikita talk about her various loved ones, with only the occasional interjection for encouragement or questions.  Through it, she spoke wistfully of Alex and Michael, her partner and her fiancé respectively, who had saved her life by making it worth living, and whom she couldn’t live without; of Owen, who always had her back and scared her like no one else; of Ryan, who was brilliant and who on the regular did things she could never do, and whom she definitively wanted Jill to meet; of Birkhoff and Sonya, who’d sneaked up on her in the best possible way; of Sean, who’d deserved better. She loved them all, she didn’t say. She didn’t need to.

As was her way, Nikita spoke without concern for larger narratives, leaving Jill to take the various disparate hints and use them to bridge the gaps in her story and form conclusions. The first of these conclusions was that Nikita, despite her Jane Bond mystique, was utterly unsuited to being alone.  She needed people and knew it, and a lot of her current despondency seemed to stem for want of them. The second was that, although it wasn’t clear, a lot of her friends seemed to have at some worked for Jeremy’s killers at some point, which suggested that Nikita’s situation had changed a lot in the past four years, to a degree Jill could scarcely imagine but was not ready to ask about. The third and most disappointing one was that Nikita, in the end, seemed not to have rebuffed Jill’s aid because she had all the help she needed, but because she didn’t want or need Jill’s help specifically. As she listened, Jill tried to set that last thought aside. Irrelevant, at the moment. 

“So I left them all behind. Didn’t say a word—I just ran.” Nikita said, her tone indicating that her story was nearing its conclusion. Telling it seemed to have helped: while Jill suspected that the assassin was still at sea, she no longer seemed to be drowning. “I don’t know if they’ll ever speak to me again.”

“Why not?” It was more prompt than an actual question. Jill suspected the answer, and that it had nothing to do with Nikita’s friends.

“Because I made the decision for them, again. Because I didn’t trust them. Because even if I’m crazy lucky and don’t get arrested or killed before I clear my name, they have every right to not want to.”

“Is that how you think they’ll feel?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Jill’s gaze met Nikita’s in disbelief. Part of her wanted to laugh: the idea that Nikita could be brought down by low self-esteem of all things felt patently ridiculous. What’s more, you couldn’t get to be a super-spy without being able to understand people; for her to be utterly unable to read the people closest to her, or to understand how people saw her…

But that wasn’t how it worked, she was reminded by other, more empathetic parts of her. It wasn’t about knowledge. Evidence, especially contradictory evidence, only reinforced the initial idea. Conspiracy theorists, the ones that lost themselves, worked the same way.

 “Can I share something with you?” Jill took Nikita’s slight head shake as assent. “You know what I said earlier, about how I eventually realized you weren’t going to call me?”

“Jill…”

“No. Listen to me. I’m not saying you were wrong. Maybe it was stupid of me to think I could help, or that you’d need my help. I know I didn’t have your training, or connections, and maybe I’d just have ended up being something else for you to worry about. But still. It hurt, that I didn’t get to help you take down Jeremy’s killers. It hurt that you didn’t think I could be useful, or that I couldn’t learn how to take care of myself. It still hurts.

“But here’s the thing. It’s okay. I’m not saying it was right, but I lived and got over it, and now I realize you were just caring the way you know how. And heck, it was probably for the best, given how this entire night has gone. And if I get that, and can be okay with it, then I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that your friends won’t. You screwed up. It happens.

“And listen. Maybe you’re right: maybe I don’t know who you were, or who you are. Maybe that person was terrible. But I do know who you’re trying to be. And that person? She deserves all the good things. And I get that you may not think that right now, and I get it. Until you do though, just know that you can stay here. No judgment. And if you find that you need to run away again without telling me, well, that’s okay too. It’ll hurt, but I’ll understand.”

And with that, Jill stopped. She’d been flailing, combining words that sound like they went together and then throwing them off a cliff to see if they would fly, but once said, there was nothing she regretted. Nikita did deserve good things. A world in which she, after all she’d done, didn’t deserve them wasn’t the fair or just world it needed to be. 

Nikita did not immediately respond to Jill’s appeal, and her dazed look, which hadn’t changed at all since the reporter had begun her little speech, made Jill wonder if she’d listened to any of it.  In any case, Nikita now appeared to need to time to process, and, with no idea what else to do, Jill turned her gaze downwards, to give her companion a semblance of privacy. She’d been staring at nothing for a minute when she felt the weight of the assassin’s head on her shoulder.

“Thank you,” Nikita whispered dreamily. “I needed that.”

\----

Of the things Jill would have altered about the previous night, neglecting to take a change of clothes with her before lending Nikita her room was a relatively minor one. Currently, it was the most pressing. 

Her initial plan, upon waking up after eventually falling back asleep, had been to head outside and buy breakfast for them both. This plan was summarily abandoned when she realized that she had nothing she could wear, and that the various clothes strewn about the living room were not various enough to collectively make up an entire acceptable going-to-get-breakfast ensemble.  Inside the kitchen, barefoot and in the t-shirt and exercise shorts she’d slept in, Jill considered her options.  There was granola cereal in the pantry, but this seemed less than acceptable, for a guest.

She’d have to cook.

While cooking had never been one of Jill’s passions, she’d lived long enough on her own to develop some skill preparing a smattering of dishes. The problem today, rather, came from a lack of ingredients. Had she had fresh vegetables handy she would have cut them, fried them for a while, and scrambled them into the eggs that she did have, but alas, no fresh vegetables. She’d have to rely on the exponentially less appealing frozen vegetables that she didn’t actually remember buying.  As she got everything in place, including eggs, the vegetables, butter, some bacon she had handy, and all the necessary cooking utensils, she wondered if Nikita had any dietary restrictions. She hadn’t mentioned any so far, but Jill wouldn’t be surprised to find that her fighting skill and enviable figure were partly a result of a super-specific eating regimen, and if that was the case…well, it would have to be the thought that counted. Just in case, she made sure to take out a different pan for the bacon.

Twelve minutes later, Jill had been just about to dig into the prepared food when Nikita joined her. “Hey,” she said with a friendly nod, as she stood at the kitchen’s threshold. “Is there some for me?”

Her mouth too full for words, Jill pointed to the stove, where the remaining food could be found, along with the plate she’d left out for her guest. Then, after swallowing: “There’s also some orange juice in the fridge, if you want some.”

“I think I will. I’ll have to say no to the bacon, by the way. Nothing personal; just vegetarian. Thanks, though.” Nikita piled the remaining contents of the frying pan onto her plate—Jill had thought she’d made more than enough for the both of them, but it now seemed she’d made barely enough—served herself a glass of juice, and then joined her host at the table. 

Like most of the people at her newspaper, Jill tended to eat as fast as she could; time was too valuable a resource to spend on things like self-care or savoring things. Nikita, she was surprised to see, was the opposite, taking deliberately small bites and taking her time in a way that seemed natural enough, and yet somehow incongruous. “This is good,” Nikita exclaimed, using her fork for emphasis, after the third such bite. Jill had no problem believing it had been an honest assessment. 

“It could have been better. I need to actually shop for groceries sometime,” Jill apologized. Indeed, it had turned out better than she’d hoped.  Not her best, but for an emergency meal, she had no complaints. "Had you eaten at all, since, you know...the White House?"  Any answer seemed plausible, given the circumstances. 

"Not enough," Nikita answered, without reservation. "Being homeless isn't new to me, and Division taught me how to go on without food, so I managed to get what I needed. This is definitively the best meal I've had since, though. And that's not just by default." Her smile was almost enough to make Jill reconsider her stance on cooking. 

The women continued eating. Nikita finished another bite. “Are you going to go to work now? Have you decided what you’re going to do?” she wondered.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. Hope like hell I’m not still on your story.”

Nikita’s head gave a slight sideways tilt. “Well, do you actually need to do anything? Can’t you just do what you’d do if I hadn’t shown up?”

 “It’s not that simple,” Jill said with a frown. “I mean, I could, but I work with people. People who know me. They’re going to realize something’s wrong, eventually.” Jenny would probably figure out something was wrong it within the hour, and would almost certainly press her about it; Jill was not looking forward to it. “What do you plan to do?”

“The plan is—if you let me—to stay here, get into the proper headspace, and try and do some research. It’s been three days, and I still have no idea what I’m doing, aside from running.” She took what had been her fourth or fifth bite; Jill had almost finished. “By the way, who could I be that could plausibly stay here?”

Jill’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I mean that we need a cover story, in case someone notices that your apartment isn’t empty during the day and starts asking questions. It’s good to have these things set up beforehand.”   

Jill had not at all considered that, but it seemed obvious now that she had. She didn’t interact much with many of her fellow tenants, but a couple were the type to ask questions as their form of small talk. And while the apartment walls were sufficient to prevent specifics of her conversations with Nikita from being overheard, they likely wouldn’t prevent those living closest to her from realizing she hadn't been alone. “Well, it can’t be family,” she said, after a moment of thought. “Most of them are at the other side of the country, and they wouldn’t be staying here if they were visiting. I could say you’re my girlfriend, and you’re staying here after getting out of the hospital.”

The suggestion had been partly a joke, and partly a test; it wasn’t a terrible idea, but Jill hadn’t expected it to go anywhere, or for Nikita’s eyes to brighten in amusement upon hearing it. “Sounds good. What was I in the hospital for? Something that wouldn’t raise many questions, so probably not something like an accident or gunshot.”

“How about an appendicitis? Your appendix hurt, you got sent to the hospital, and I insisted that you stay here while you recovered.” Such a thing had actually happened to a roommate once, two living spaces ago, with disastrous consequences. Not a great moment.

“Okay, then. Just make sure you remember that. Hopefully you won’t need to use it, but it’s good to have it in place if you do.”

They ate in silence for the next few minutes after that.  Nikita, Jill thought, looked a lot more centered than she had the previous night. Without the immediate tension brought about by external circumstance, she looked like she had during their first encounter. While that version of Nikita wasn’t any more or less real than the ones she’d seen in the past day, Jill reminded herself, it was the one that made her most comfortable.

Jill finished her food, and was motioning to stand up when Nikita spoke. “Jill?”

“Yeah?” Jill aborted the movement.

“I just wanted to say: I’m sorry. For being weird and awkward and not myself yesterday.”

The statement was true and its contrition real, Jill immediately knew. It was also, for reasons that had nothing to do with the actual words being expressed and everything to do with the way Nikita looked at her while she said it, utterly unnerving. “Nikita, it’s fine. Really,” Jill stammered, going for casual dismissal but sounding transparently ill at ease, which was precisely how she felt. “You’ve been framed for murder. You get to be weird and off-balance.”

“I’m not done.” Nikita locked her eyes upon Jill’s; it felt like hypnosis, or what Jill imagined hypnosis felt like. In any case, she found herself unable to look away. “You know, when I came here, it was collect a debt. I thought I was going to have to hold you at gunpoint until I explained that I hadn’t killed Spencer, and convinced you to let me stay, or until I realized that they’d gotten to you and convinced you to turn me in.

“And then, after you told me that you believed in me, and told me you’d been researching me, and let me stay, and hugged me, I thought. ‘I can’t do this again. I can’t let another person that cares for me get involved in my shit.’ And so I got ready to bolt. I was going to get a couple of hours of sleep, recharge my batteries, and then leave you like I did my friends.

“But then you came to my door—well, your door—and I realized: I couldn’t. Not to you, and not in general. I can’t run from everyone _and_ the people I care about. I’ve been trying for three days and it’s already killing me. So thank you. For helping me realize that.”

Her spiel finished, Nikita’s stare lost its intensity. Jill, now free, turned her eyes downwards, her sight resting on her own empty plate. “So does that mean you’ll go back to your friends?” she finally asked.

“No. Even if I could find them, they’re still safer if I’m not with them.  You’re different. If the people after me haven’t thought to check up on you yet, I don’t think they will. I just mean…when you come back from work, I’ll be here.”

Jill turned her gaze upwards, daring to meet Nikita's stare. It felt like a psychic lightning bolt. “I—I should go get dressed,” she stammered. She rose hastily and clumsily, and she ignored the flash of pain that came when her thighs accidentally hit the side of the table. She didn’t run to her room, but it was a close call. Once there, she closed the door behind her and leaned against it, arms crossed over her chest, trying to regain a semblance of calm. 

What the hell had _that_ been?

For a moment, Jill wondered if she hadn’t overreacted, the weirdness of the past ten hours finally having caught up to her.  After all, Nikita herself hadn't seemed to notice that she’d been doing anything out of the ordinary or untoward.  She dismissed this idea. There had definitively been something there, even if she had no idea what. She’d known Nikita for…well, for most of a day now, and the assassin had never made her feel this way, as if she’d discovered sunlight.

Jill had felt, eating breakfast, that her relationship with Nikita, whatever it was, had turned a corner after the latter’s midnight catharsis. That, after dropping her defenses and revealing herself at her lowest, Nikita was no longer anything but her true self. And while she still believed that was the case, to a degree—Nikita at breakfast had been less guarded than she’d ever seen her, and Jill had finally felt as if she’d been treated as an equal—it now seemed as if the assassin had still been keeping one final part of herself shielded.  That final barrier was now gone, and it occurred to Jill that maybe that hadn’t been there entirely for Nikita’s own protection. Maybe the barrier had been there to protect everyone else. 

Roughly a minute passed before Jill collected herself enough to actually begin working on dressing. As she brought together the pieces of her outfit for the day, she wondered: Is this how Nikita was, with her friends? Were they exposed to that energy all the time? Did they grow addicted to it? It had not been at all unpleasant, now that the initial shock had passed.  Not unlike a heart attack, but then, love also felt a bit like that. 

As Jill hiked up her selected blue calf-length skirt to its proper position, she came to a second realization. Nikita last night had indicated that her friends were perfectly willing to deal with an international manhunt in order to help clear her name and keep her safe. She’d thought she’d understood the sentiment; now it was clear she hadn’t had a clue.  Of course they’d go through such lengths for Nikita: she loved them. And now that Jill had just gotten an inkling of what that meant, she realized that not giving their all for her would be unthinkable, almost blasphemous. As she did the top buttons of her dress shirt, she realized that something else had changed: she was no longer unsure about lying for Nikita. Scared, certainly, but not unsure. Her journalistic instincts may rail and gnash their teeth, but even they understood.  Yes, Nikita was _the_ story. But she was so much more than that.

And every part of her was worth fighting for. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Chapter Eleven: "Jill, Part II"  
> \----  
> This chapter would not have been at all possible without [greywing (ctrlx)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ctrlx/pseuds/greywing), whose excellent _Orphan Black_ fic, [_except in this form in which I am not nor are you_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8047012/chapters/18431968) not only convinced me to give the series a second, very fruitful, look, but also gave me the kick in the ass necessary to take my writing to a different level. This chapter and the next are very much inspired by her work, so if you like them, please do me a favor and check that out. Familiarity with the source material is nowhere near necessary.


	11. Jill, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day (and change) in the life of Jill Morelli.

**Inside a certain Manhattan-bound subway car, New York City  
**

**Four days after the assassination of President Kathleen Spencer**

As she made her commute to the _Guardian Post_ , Jill noted how Spencer’s assassination was still the main topic on her social media feeds, as colleagues, relatives, friends, acquaintances and strangers discussed its circumstances, its probable causes, potential consequences, and its perpetrator. Unsurprisingly, many, particularly in the acquaintance spectrum, suddenly acted as if they had obtained multiple Ph.Ds. on foreign policy, counter-intelligence, the U.S. military apparatus, and terrorism over the past week, and spoke with the confidence that came about from a need to dominate the conversation everyone else was having. People—mostly men, although the ratio wasn’t as skewed as Jill would have expected—would expound on their favorite theories as to the whys, who and how: it had been Russia, or al Qaeda in retaliation for the death of Bin Laden, or even the hand of God, exacting retribution against a notorious baby-killer—why God would smite the only pro-choice female president and none of the pro-choice male presidents before her was left as an exercise for the reader. 

Also noticeable, although dismayingly less so that the theorizing, was a fair amount of talk about who the president had actually been. If nothing else, Kathleen Spencer had been the first woman to occupy the White House, and no one could take that away from her. And she’d left a legacy, despite less than a year in office.  She’d filled a Supreme Court vacancy, adding a third woman to its ranks and shifting the balance of power towards liberal judges for the first time in decades. She’d signed executive orders rolling back some abortion restrictions, which had cost her the political capital necessary later on for a vote on immigration reform.  She’d also moved to radically expand the surveillance state and the power of the nation’s law enforcement groups.   Like her predecessor, she’d left Guantanamo Bay open, despite initial promises to the contrary. She’d been a complicated woman who had changed much and didn’t lend herself well to generalization, which precious few seemed to appreciate. Mourning was an exception.

New to the discourse was another name, Nikita’s, and under different circumstances, that might have made Jill feel not-so-secretly smug.  The way people saw the world had changed, and she’d played a key role in making that happen. Here and now, however, seeing her name pop up in every fourth tweet or Facebook post only helped make the events of the past hour harder to ignore. And choosing to just not look at her phone was no help: it just gave her more time to think about what had just happened at her apartment.

Jill had met plenty of compelling people before—people who, whatever their actual attributes, carried part of themselves in such a way as to make other’s heart hasten just from being in their presence. On brief occasions, she’d even dated some of them, only to re-learn that being compelling wasn’t necessarily the same as being healthy. She’d known from the start that Nikita had that same ability—she needed to, in order to be able to kidnap complete strangers and convince them that following her across the country was in their best interests.  She’d also known that whatever attraction she’d felt during those first few days in 2010 couldn’t last. Even when she’d fantasized about uncovering conspiracies with Nikita, those fantasies had always felt persistently abstract: once she tried to think about such a partnership in terms of time, and what it might look like a year, a month, or even a week in the future, her ideas lost all substance and became, literally, inconceivable. She simply didn’t know enough about Nikita in order to truly imagine what a future with her in it—in whatever capacity—would be like. 

Of course, that was the thing about compelling people, Jill knew: the lack of knowledge was necessary in order to maintain the spell. Once you truly got to know them, you inevitably realized that behind that aura was an actual person—a good person, perhaps, and one you could maybe trust or love or commit to—but not one that could co-exist with that first impression. This is where she was now, with Nikita, except in her case it had somehow made her, if anything, _more_ beguiling.

And so what did that mean, for them?  If Jill were being honest with herself, she’d admit that part of her still hoped that Nikita would sweep her off her feet, admit that she was massively in lust with her, and carry her to that humongous loft of hers for a weekend of some very in-depth sports journalism.  Afterwards…she still didn’t know, and the events of the past hour had only made things even harder to determine. If it were a hetero movie, then yes, she’d know where this was all going. Real life, disappointingly, was never that predictable.

\----

Since the assassination, _The Guardian Post_ had settled into its new normal, which actually looked quite a lot like the old normal. While a lot of the paper’s staff was still dealing with the consequences of the President’s death, the death itself had ceased being news, and so “dealing”, more often than not, meant treating developments as if they were any other event. It was how they coped. 

Jenny had taken Jill’s chair.  She did that, when she arrived first and needed to talk, as if Jill wouldn’t just go to her desk first thing anyway. It was, as always, mildly annoying—Jill could never quite stop picturing her rifling through her things, largely because that's what she herself would do in that situation—but her paranoia wasn’t Jenny’s problem and they were friends, so she remained silent.

“Clark wants us at the office. Also, hi,” Jenny greeted with her usual early morning spryness. She had a cup of terrible newspaper coffee on each hand—the interns had been relieved from Starbucks duty two days earlier—and handed the one from her right hand to Jill.

“So what was that call, yesterday?” Jenny asked casually, as they walked across the bullpen to their boss’ office. 

“Oh, that,” Jill said, after taking a moment to remember what, in that eventful night, Jenny referred to. “I thought someone might have broken into the apartment. It was stupid.” The truth, in a sense.

“Not at all. I’m glad you’re okay. I assume,” Jenny responded, and Jill elected to let her silence misrepresent her. The two reporters greeted JoAnne, formerly Jeremy’s assistant / receptionist / bodyguard / minder, and now Clark’s, and then walked past her desk and into the Managing Editor’s office. 

One of Frederick Clark’s first tasks when he replaced Jeremy Holt was to bring in Jill as part of the _Guardian Post_ staff. The decision had led to a level of initial strife, as Jeremy had been well-liked and Jill, in addition to having a reputation, was still seen as responsible for his murder by some, but she had always been grateful for the vote of confidence, and endeavored every day to be worthy of it.  She hoped he would forgive her current betrayal, if he ever came to learn of it.  Today, as the two reporters entered his office, Clark looked almost serene, a state of affair that never outlived the morning hours.  “Congratulations on your story, you two. Good job,” he said, matter-of-factly. 

 “Thank you,” responded Jenny, with one of her usual stunning smiles. “So what’s next? Are we going back to D.C.? Jersey?”

“Actually, no. You’ll still be handling any tips that come your way, but unless you have any additional leads you want to tell me about, our people there can hold down the fort. No, I want you to stay here and work on The Man with the Suit.”

“The Man in the…why?” Jill heard herself blurt out. “How is that—?” What.

“Think about it,” Jenny interrupted, her smile having turned sly. “Highly trained. Likes rescuing people in danger. Able to evade capture for months.”

“She’s got it,” Clark confirmed. “Maybe he’s connected to Nikita. Maybe he isn’t, and so we have two unconnected highly-trained vigilantes running around, which is a story in itself. Wouldn’t it be nice to find out?”

The idea did not require much mulling: it was a damn good one. Maxine Angelis, a fellow investigative reporter and occasional rival, had once talked over drinks about the time she’d accidentally dated The Man in the Suit, and Jill had been immediately struck by the parallel to her own experience with Nikita. The specifics were different—Maxine’s story had involved kissing, for one—but the broad strokes had felt eerily familiar: criminal conspiracies, stories that got innocent people killed, saviors who had been there just in the nick of time and had helped them uncover the truth before disappearing…now that she thought about it, she was mildly annoyed that the possibility of a material connection between the two hadn’t occurred to her, even when she’d first begun investigating the vigilante in 2011. Nikita had _really_ taken her off her game. 

In any case, Jill couldn’t believe her good fortune. The Man in the Suit. More crucially, not Nikita. She wouldn’t have to spend the next week self-sabotaging her investigation and lying about it.  To prevent her relief from showing up in her face, Jill decided to work on the rest of her coffee, ignoring the way it scalded.

“So how deep do you want us to go?” Jenny asked. “Find him? Interview him? Out him?”

“Nothing that ambitious, although if you happen to get there, then by all means. For now, let’s just start with the old sources, and maybe try to finally figure out why the F.B.I. closed its investigation when they did. Maybe we can shake something off, and if not, we can at least go to bed satisfied at having annoyed them.” It was a reliable half-joke, but today it seemed less than amusing, at least to Jill.

“By the way”—Clark continued—“you two need to check your e-mails, if you haven’t already: you’ve both gotten invites to talk about the article on TV. You’ll agree, of course.”

“Any special instructions?” Jenny asked. 

“Make us look good.” With no further instructions, Clark waved the two women out of his sanctum.

 “Are you okay?” Jenny asked, as the two women ambled toward their desks. “You were kinda silent back there, and you don’t seem terribly disappointed.”

“Why would I be disappointed?” Jill queried, trying not to look as if she was trying to look normal. Once they’d arrived at her desk, she took her seat, removed her waste basket from its nook, threw the empty coffee cup in, and replaced the basket. “I thought you thought it was a good idea.”

“It’s not a bad one, if it works, but come on. How long did you tell me you spent looking for guy in the freaking suit the first time? Two months officially, one month unofficially, after that? What are the chances we’ll be able to do so now? Unless you want to try and take a hit out on yourself to try and draw him out.”  

“No thank you. I’ve got enough excitement in my life,” Jill responded, with complete sincerity. She could still recall, far too vividly, the sensation of the Division agent holding her down and forcing the gun that killed Jeremy onto her hand. “And why do I have to be the bait? Why not you?”

“Hell no. Jacob would kill me if I tried it. Which might work, actually. Maybe Suits will get wind up of that, aaaand…oh.”

“You okay? You went silent.”

“I was just thinking. The Man in the Suit. The thing about him is that he’s supposed to know when people are in danger, right?”

“That’s what people say.” That was part of his mystique—he knew when people’s lives were at risk, and often showed up before the actual danger did. It was the best case for his actual existence; it was hard to call him an urban legend when word of him coincided with a noticeable drop in the homicide rate. The placebo effect could only account for so much. “Why?”

“I was just wondering: if he knows who might get killed, did he know about the President?” 

Jill tried to visualize the implications, and gave up. “Good question.”

\----

Jill had first spoken to Joss Carter almost two years earlier, after The Man in the Suit had initially made the transition from “urban legend” to “impossible to dismiss”. Although there had been little about the homicide detective that stood out as extraordinary on paper, she’d nevertheless been a memorable interviewee for reasons Jill had not then been able to define. The past day, however, had given Jill new context, and now it was easy to see: Detective Carter had been another compelling person. She wasn’t at all like Nikita, who felt fluid and unpredictable and wore her extraordinariness like a Met Gala dress, but she was extraordinary nonetheless, and she’d expressed it by being, more than anything, solid. She’d not only been a cop who actually seemed to have the concept of “protect and serve” etched into her very soul, she’d also been the first to not treat Jill as the enemy, which made it impossible to treat her as one, or even as simply a tool to be used. Although the detective had kept things to herself, setting clear boundaries between what she could, and couldn’t reveal, she also been generous with what she could reveal, understanding that it was important that people on the streets know what they were dealing with.  When Jill had considered people to call for her newly reopened story, she had easily topped the list. 

Now, as they met at the same diner where their very first interview had taken place (Jenny was off investigating sightings and claims of The Man in the Suit made since the case had officially closed late last year) it was clear things were different: although she greeted the reporter warmly enough, it wasn’t hard to notice the strain underneath. Unsurprising, given the circumstances, but Jill couldn’t help but wonder if there was anything more specific behind it.

“I read your article,” Detective Carter said, once she’d sat down opposite Jill. Jill noticed the detective glance at the notepad at the table and next to it, Jill’s recorder, “Congratulations: I’m not sure you haven’t just thrown gas in the fire, but I can’t really blame you all for doing what you do.”

“I will take that as a compliment,” Jill responded, sincerely. 

“I meant it as one,” Carter said, managing a warm, if somewhat strained-seeming, smile. “So Nikita, huh? No last name. Like Prince.”

“Like Prince,” Jill parroted.  

“And they were looking for her before she broke into the White House? That’s...” She let the sentence die from implications.

“Yup.”

The interview had barely started, and already it seemed to have turned around, with the detective leading the dance. That was another thing about Carter: if you let her, she’d get as much information as she got. Usually not a concern, if she weren’t currently housing the person of most interest. A waiter approached them and took their meal orders: Carter ordered cheeseburger and fries, along with a cup of coffee, and Jill chose to follow her lead.  “Now what is it you want to know about Mark Snow?” Detective Carter asked, once they’d been left alone.

Jill picked up her pen and wrote _leads with Snow_ down in her notepad. It wasn’t something she was likely to forget, even without the recorder, but just the act of writing things down was sometimes a source of inspiration. She set the pad and pencil down, picked up the recorder, and pressed the button marked “rec.” “Not Mark Snow. The man in the suit.”

“Mark Snow was The Man in the Suit,” Carter answered, automatically. So that’s how it was going to be. Whatever her past behavior, today Carter was going to obfuscate. Fair enough. It wasn’t as if Jill hadn’t prepared for this eventuality.

“Say you’re right. Then why do we still have sightings, months after the investigation closed? Cars are still blowing up, and people are still ‘accidentally’ shooting themselves in the kneecaps at an alarming rate. Are you saying we have a copycat?”

Carter’s face revealed nothing. “All I’m saying is that the F.B.I. found their man.”

Jill took another note. “And did _you_ find him? If he’s still—if there’s a copycat, and the F.B.I. isn’t looking, shouldn’t the N.Y.P.D.?”

“Ideally, but given everything on our plate—the Russians, Elias, now all this President Spencer craziness—we have to prioritize. Personally, I’ve learned to live with blown-up cars and kneecapped criminals if it means I have time to solve actual murders.”

She had a point. The N.Y.P.D. wasn’t in the permanent state of financial precariousness the _Guardian Post_ was, but still, there was always more to do than could be paid attention to. If the paper was covering The Man in the Suit now, it was partly because it had been ignoring him for months.  She picked up her pencil again and wrote _NYPD overtaxed?_  

“So is the NYPD overtaxed?” Not a question for which she expected an answer, but throwing it around would facilitate further questions. 

Carter smirked. “You’d have to go to One Police Plaza for that.”

“Okay, so let me change the question. Homicides have risen in the past few days, haven’t they?”

“Have they?” Jocelyn Carter may not be the enemy, but she knew how the game was played.

“Well, the people at the crime desk say so—they say it’s been more than two years since it’s been this bad, and getting worse. Do you have any idea why that might be the case?”

“Well, the President getting killed sounds like just the thing to bring out the violence in people, don’t you think?”  

It was possible. Plausible, even. But then, Jill wasn’t in this business because she cared for plausible. “Here’s what _I_ think. You asked me why I wanted to know about the Man in the Suit. From everything people have said about him over the years, just about the only word that doesn’t also describe Nikita is ‘man’. That interests me. I also think that it’s hard not to notice how he’s been—or had been—operating in New York, singlehandedly stopping homicides, until one day, Nikita kills the president. Suddenly, homicides are on the rise. Coincidence?” As Clark had said, possibly, but she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

Carter, for her part, did not seem to think much of anything of Jill’s claims. “So you’re saying what? That we should have been looking for The Woman in the Suit?”

Jill pushed away intrusive thoughts of how good Nikita would look in a suit. “I’m just saying is that he’s worth looking into again. So if you have anything that could help me with that—case files, impressions, ideas, names of people he’s saved of stopped… Then, if we find him, maybe he can help tell us something about Nikita.”

“That sounds like one hell of a long shot. Well, if you want to find him, you could try planning your own murder. I hear that works, with him.” Coming from Carter, it actually felt like a joke. Not so, with other cops.

The waiter arrived with their food. As they ate, their interview paused and the recorder off, Jill noticed that Carter’s attention was not in her food. With the lull in the questions, her mind seemed to have wandered off nowhere near the diner.

“Hey,” Jill asked, as she placed her half-eaten burger on its plate. “Off the record, are you alright? You look…”

“Stressed?” she said glumly. “Me and every other cop in the country.”

“Is that all it is?”

“Well…” Carter took a fry, dipped the end in the ketchup container, and ate it in a single bite.  “Have you heard about the detective that got killed some days back? Cal Beecher?”

“I might have. I really can’t be sure,” she said sincerely. “What about him?”

“He and I…we’d been dating. Nothing long term, but it could have been, you know?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. Thing is, at first I thought I would feel better by just losing myself in the work. Now I realize all that did is make me miserable _and_ exhausted. Now we have all this _crap_ to deal with, and I just want to take a moment and just stop. Except I can’t.”

Jill said nothing. Carter took a gulp from her cup before continuing.  “And the worst part is, so much is going on that sometimes I forget. I’m working a case or talking to Fusco—my partner—when suddenly it hits me again.”

Jill knew the feeling. The same thing had occurred, in a more compact time frame, after Jeremy’s murder—for brief moments, the cloak and dagger intrigue would push the editor away from her mind, until things calmed down and it hit her again. She considered mentioning it, but decided not to. Maybe it would make Carter feel less alone, but then, it could just as likely make her feel as if her pain was being diminished. Jeremy had been someone she’d known, but he hadn’t been a loved one.  

That said, she wanted to help. “Do you want to talk to me? About him?” What was her job, after all, if not to listen? 

\----

Jill arrived back at her apartment to find Nikita in a _mayurasana_ yoga pose, which she maintained while watching television.  She declined to voice a greeting, lest she break her guest’s concentration, and moved silently towards the kitchen, where she placed the two bags of early dinner takeout she’d carried with her, and a third additional bag containing a gift for Nikita, atop the counter. After dropping her purse on the kitchen table, she returned to the living room to continue observing the assassin as she balanced her downward-inclined body atop her forearms. 

Jill herself had been an inconstant practitioner of yoga, trying it on and off since college whenever time, budget, and interest allowed.  She’d never been more than middling at it, but she’d learned enough, at least, to recognize she could never do what Nikita was doing. Emulating a dog was one thing; a peacock, another thing entirely.  After a few moments, her attention briefly turned to the television, where on ENN, Dale Gordon talked about his current favorite topic, the president’s assassination.  It seemed paradoxical for Nikita to try to relax while at the same time watching something that almost certainly did anything but, but everyone had their ways.

“I’ll be right with you in a moment,” Nikita said, as she lowered her body and shifted to the less strenuous downward-facing dog position.  Jill nodded to indicate understanding, took a seat behind her on the couch, and tried not to leer.  Nikita was still in the borrowed NYU tee, and had once again donned Jill’s pajama bottoms, for which Jill was grateful; the woman was distracting enough as it was. 

Eventually Nikita finished her exercises. “Sorry about that,” she said, her eyes indicating the spot where her sweat had given the floorboards an uncommon sheen. “I saw a yoga mat in your hallway closet, but didn’t want to use it without permission. I’ll mop up in a moment.”

“It’s fine—thank you,” Jill reassured. So far so good—no heart attack-like feelings yet. Maybe that had been a one-time thing. “And you can use the mat if you need to.” Better that than laying there uselessly, as it had for more than a year. “How are you?”

“Better,” she said plainly, and Jill took her lack of elaboration as a sign that nothing noteworthy had occurred. “You? You’re home early.”

“Yes, and no. My day’s not done. I’m just here to eat and rest a bit before I head back to Manhattan—I’m going to be interviewed about my article.” 

“Nice!” Nikita exclaimed. “Who are you talking to?”

“Claudia Monarch. _DoubleSpeak_.”  

“Claudia Monarch” Nikita echoed, as if trying out for taste. “Should I be offering congratulations or condolences?”

“The first. I _really_ like her,” In addition to being a fantastic journalist and host, she was also one of the most high-profile publicly out women in the field, which Jill had found to be a source of comfort and inspiration in her own career. 

“How about him?” Nikita said, with a slight tilt in the direction of the television, where Dale Gordon had worked himself up into a rhythm speechifying about how Nikita’s connection to the C.I.A. attack _strongly suggested_ a connection between her and what he called the parallel state. “Is he any good?”

“For an ENN guy, or in general?”

“Yes.”

“He’s alright.” She’d never gotten to know him personally, but his reputation as a fellow conspiracy nut meant they navigated the same waters, although in his case, far more successfully.  If there was a difference between them, it was that Jill’s continuing employment often rested upon not pursuing her wilder theories, while doing that very thing had given Gordon his career at ENN, a career that, if the past few days were any indication, was about to pay off magnificently in a way that annoyed her, when she thought about it. “Why?”

“He mentioned something earlier. Made me think. I’ll tell you about it later.  Anyway, was that food I saw you bring in? Because I am starving.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Jill answered. She was astonished Nikita had noticed that much, given her position when she’d entered. “Are you okay with Thai?”

“I’m more than okay with Thai,” she said with a smile.   

“Good. Cause I bought a lot.”

While Nikita took to the shower to wash away the sweat, Jill set out the table, putting out plates, and distributing the meal— stir-fried noodles in peanut sauce, with bamboo shoots, onions, eggplant, and tofu, and with vegetarian pot stickers on the side—between the two of them, with the bulk going to Nikita’s plate. From the fridge she retrieved a carton of mango juice, which she distributed, with ice, between two glasses. Once done, she sat down and waited for Nikita, who arrived a few minutes later wearing cargo pants and a white tank top which, Jill noted, revealed no new tattoos to add to the three she already knew about.  After complimenting the meal’s appearance, she sat down and they began to eat. 

“Jill, do you know anything about Spencer’s autopsy?” Nikita asked, after the minute of silence that had followed the minute of small talk about the food’s quality. 

“Not really. I know it happened, but I don’t think there was anything weird about it.” Given the cause of death, she’d imagined it couldn’t have been more than a formality. Although if Nikita was asking… “Is this what Dale was talking about?” A nod. “What were you hoping for?”

“I’m not sure. Something. Anything.”

Jill stabbed a cube of tofu and ate it, not bothering to savor it. “You know, this conversation would probably go a lot smoother if you just told me what went on that night.”  

“You’re getting interviewed in a while. How good are you at making up lies on the spot, if you’re asked an inconvenient question?”

“Good point. You will tell me afterwards, though, right?” She’d decided earlier that she didn’t need the whole story, but wanting it was a different thing.

“Scouts honor,” Nikita said, holding up three fingers in her right hand in mock solemnity. “Tonight.”

After they’d finished their meal, Jill went to the fridge and removed two of the remaining pints of frozen yogurt. She gave one to Nikita, along with a spoon, and sat down to deal with hers. “Nikita, can I ask you something?” she asked, as she removed the plastic covering from the container. “It’s not about the White House, or about Division.”

“Shoot,” Nikita answered. She’d already begun working on her fro-yo.

“Do you know about the Man in the Suit?”

Nikita’s brow furrowed. “The vigilante? I’ve heard about him. Why?”

“I was just wondering. Highly trained badass. Likes rescuing people. Can evade capture for months. Sounds like some other people I could name.”

Nikita grinned impishly. “If you’re insinuating I’m the Man in the Suit, I’m just going to go ahead and deny that. On the record, even.”

“Thank you. But no, I was thinking…what if he’s a Division member?” 

Nikita paused, as if trying to approach the idea with tongs. “I…can’t imagine that being the case, really.” She used her spoon to lightly scrape off the top layer of frozen yogurt. “Now that you mention it, though—I’d have to think about it. Let’s say maybe. Is this for work?”

“Yeah, my editor thinks there might be a connection between you two. I was kind of hoping there was one—it seems like there should be.” 

“Sorry to disappoint. Still, though: when he was active?”

“It’s not quite clear. For sure by fall 2011, but there’s some things that suggest that it may have been earlier. Is that significant?”

“It might be. If it were later, then I’d say there’s a decent chance he could be Division, but not if he was active earlier.  I can’t imagine Percy or Amanda thinking keeping an agent as a vigilante was a good idea—although who knows?”

Yet another oblique reference to things Nikita knew Jill didn’t know, and the second reference to an Amanda. Before she could decide whether to ask about it, however, an alarm sounded on Jill’s cell phone. It was time to get ready to leave, if she wanted to get to the studio on time. 

\----

Claudia Monarch’s opening segments typically began the same way: she’d choose a topic tangentially related to the one she actually wished to talk about, and then talked about it at length before eventually explaining how it related to the actual top news of the day. It worked well enough, on most occasions, and it was encouraging to see that someone cared about giving proper context to things, but there were instances when Jill just wished she’d get to the damn point.  Tonight was not one of those occasions, and as she waited in the green room for her cue, all made up and wired for sound, Jill had to admit to a level of entrancement.

Like Dale Gordon, Claudia now spoke about little else besides President Spencer (although like with the _Guardian Post_ , there were already hints that that wouldn’t be the case for much longer). Tonight, this meant, unsurprisingly, that she was first talking about the 2011 C.I.A. attack.

“Part of the thing about terrorists and mass murderers”—Claudia began with her usual poise—“or at least the successful ones, is that they’re rarely on anyone’s radar until they attack. That’s how they work. People would look at Ted Kaczynski, and they didn’t go ‘I bet he secretly mails bombs.’ He was just the local anarchist.  We didn’t know that Asif al Jamil was a radicalized Muslim until the Liberty Island Ferry bombing back in 2010.  

“You would think the same would be the case for the Spencer assassination.  It’s complicated enough to get into the White House when you don’t have a criminal record; getting in when you’re a person of interest in an ongoing C.I.A. investigation should be impossible. 

“And yet, this appears to be precisely what happened. As an article released today on the _Guardian Post_ reveals, Spencer’s killer, who had been identified as Susan Mason but may also go by the name Nikita, had previously been on the intelligence community’s radar for her role in the 2011 attack on Langley—a strike at the very heart of the C.I.A., which led to the resignation of its then-director William Abbott. A statement by F.B.I. Deputy Director Matthew Graham, head of the task force in charge of finding Nikita, has since confirmed the story. 

“Details on this attack remain scarce, more than two years later. We know that several shots were fired inside Langley, and that three C.I.A. employees were killed. Sources inside the agency later revealed that at the same time, a nerve agent was released inside the building, and that although there were no casualties, the attack appeared to be aimed at director Abbott himself. These reports were never confirmed, and only one arrest was ever made, that of former C.I.A. analyst Ryan Fletcher, who was never charged for either the murders or the nerve gas, but rather assault and aiding and abetting the escape of a suspect. That suspect’s name has never been disclosed, until now.”

The story was incomplete, Jill knew. Abbott had told her and Jenny in plain terms that Nikita had actually been responsible for the nerve gas attack’s failure. The problem is that she was also responsible for the fact that it had almost succeeded in the first place. In the end, it had just been simpler and less embarrassing to let the gas attack remain a public mystery, while officially focusing on the murders. And it had worked, at least until now.  

“Successful mass murderers, assassins and terrorists are rarely on law enforcement’s radar before they attack,” continued Claudia. “Very rarely do they manage to be directly involved in two high-profile attacks on American soil—not at the field level.  Only once have they been able to evade justice on both occasions. For Nikita to have been able to infiltrate Langley two years ago and the White House now raises vital, urgent questions about our intelligence agencies, our national security, and about what it is we can expect in the future. It’s one thing for someone to enter the White House and be allowed in the Oval Office to speak to the president alone. It’s another thing entirely for that person to be granted that access when she’s also wanted in connection to a terrorist attack. That it happened cannot be laid solely at Nikita’s feet, or at the feet of whoever is behind her. To do so would be massively irresponsible, and leave us vulnerable to further attacks.”

A staffer signaled Jill to let her know it was time. As she made way out of the green room, and into the stage, she went through the mental preparation exercises which she’d been taught in anticipation to her very first interview, three and a half years ago, after AirMerica. And as she walked to the news desk and sat down next to one of her heroes of journalism, she allowed herself to feel a measure of pride. 

Showtime. 

\----

Jill, after a brief moment of concentration to make sure her muscle memory didn’t take over, selected the “save” option. She was usually the sort to erase TV shows from her D.V.R. once she’d watched them once, but this would be an exception. “So?” Jill asked, as she turned off the TV and set down the controller. “I wasn’t terrible, was I?” As she moved, the remaining red wine sloshed precariously in its glass, held carelessly in her right hand. With one final gulp, Jill emptied the vessel. 

“Not at all. You were excellent,” Nikita said, from her position sitting at the right end of the couch.

“You know, I never liked speaking in public.” Jill said, as she joined Nikita, sitting across it with her back on the left armrest, her legs folded to give Nikita space. Nikita, meanwhile, turned at a right angle to face Jill, her legs crossed atop the couch. “People told me I didn’t have to pick a dead medium—with my looks, I should have gone straight for TV. I was just ‘Have you met me?’”

“Well, you stuck to your guns, and now look at you,” Nikita commented encouragingly. Her own wineglass, Jill noticed, had remained largely untouched after a few experimental sips, and now rested within reach on the floor.

“So I didn’t look stupid or dumbstruck or just dumb? That happens, when I’m with people I admire. My brain just goes poof.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” Nikita replied, with a touch of sympathetic humor. “But seriously, you did fine.”

“And did I say anything that would hurt you?” She didn’t think she’d said anything that wasn’t already in the original article, but of course, she had no way to know how harmful the things she said were, until Nikita told her. Annoying, that.

“I don’t think so. I think we’re good.” The “we” was an unwelcome reminder that Jill was currently a co-conspirator and accessory, and was now in a fair of danger herself. She pushed that thought away; it was a time to feel good about herself. 

Jill picked up the wine bottle, which she’d placed at the foot of the couch, and after sitting down straight for stability, she refilled her glass to its halfway point and then returned to her earlier position. Earlier in the night, she’d suggested they drink to celebrate her TV appearance, in lieu of going out as she’d normally do, but the mood, while not dour or glum, was several steps removed from festive. Half an hour past midnight, there were too many thoughts in her head, and the wine, far from helping silence them as she’d hoped, made them much harder to ignore. “Nikita are you worried that people will figure out the truth?” she asked, as she took in a mouthful of the medium dry rosé.

Nikita’s gaze briefly turned downwards as she considered the question, and then rose again to meet Jill’s. “Not exactly. I’d love for people to figure it out—realize I didn’t do it. I’m just worried what will happen if they do. And it’s not just individuals. I’m not sure the country could survive knowing the truth. I’m not sure I’ve come to grips with it, to be honest.” 

“But you’ve trusted people with it. Your friends—you told them.”

“Yes, because I know they can take care of themselves, and they have the proper context to understand it.”

“And I can’t.” Jill said, glumly, the stupidity of her words plain as soon as they escaped her mouth. It hadn't been a question, because it wasn't something she needed answered. 

“Honestly? No. You can’t, and you don’t—and before you object, let me finish.” Jill had indeed opened her mouth to object, but closed it soundlessly without doing so. “I do think the truth is dangerous. But”—she let the word stand on its own for a moment—“it’s not my decision to make. You’re in on this now, and you deserve not to be kept in the dark. The question is, do you want to know?”

The question required no thought. “Yes.”

Nikita’s eyes narrowed in skepticism—or perhaps annoyance. “You’re sure.”

“Yes,” Jill repeated. “Look, Nikita, I know it’s dangerous. Still, I’m involved now. And I can’t keep walking on eggshells when it comes to you. I can’t keep worrying ‘is this the thing that puts Nikita in danger?’ And I can’t help you if I don’t know the story.”

“Okay then. So where do you want to do this?”

Jill did not answer immediately. She had, frankly, not expected Nikita to acquiesce, not so quickly. “Here is fine, I think.” A bit too informal for a regular interview, but this was not that. “Um…can I record this?”

Nikita rolled her eyes in mocking disbelief. “Really, Jill.”

“Oh, come on,” Jill exclaimed, as she felt herself falling back into her reporter rhythms. “It’s not like I plan to give it to anyone. I just feel there should be…you know, a record. What if something happens to you? Wouldn’t you want _someone_ to know the truth? And be able to say, ‘this is what Nikita said’ and be able to prove it?”

Jill noticed, as she watched Nikita consider this, the first few warnings signs that she may be dozing off—for a moment her eyes grew out of focus and she had to stop herself from swaying. She had not considered how exhausting the day had been, or how it might affect her reaction to the wine. It was not usually a problem. “Point,” the assassin finally said. “Alright, but you need to show me the recorder first.”

Jill reached into her purse, fortuitously placed on the floor next to her side of the couch, and pulled out her recorder, the same make and model as the one Nikita had destroyed almost three and a half years ago, and handed it over. “It’s completely offline. Nobody’s going to be hacking into this. It’s safe.”

“Fine. But Jill“—she waved the recorder for emphasis—“this cannot get out. Do you understand? Even if I’m able to clear my name, my life—maybe even the country—depends on the things I tell you remaining secret until I’m ready for them not to be.”

“I understand.” And she did. 

After a small “testing, testing” to ensure everything was working, and making sure she wouldn’t be recording over the Carter interview, Jill placed her recorder on the space between them on the couch. The sound quality wouldn’t be great, but it didn’t need to be. 

Nikita repositioned herself on the couch, crossing her legs like before and facing Jill, but with her posture now straightened in a way that conveyed seriousness even within the circumstances, and which Jill herself mirrored. “What should I start with?” she asked.

“We can start with anything. It’s up to you.”

Nikita clasped her hands together, fingers intertwined, and she began, her voice rang clear and unwavering in a way that made Jill think back to Claudia Monarch for a moment. “The first thing you should know is that everything they’re saying is almost true. I was at the White House the day of Spencer’s murder. I was there to kill the president. That’s why I reacted the way I did when you told me I couldn’t have done it. I almost did.”

Jill looked at Nikita, looking almost fearful as she attempted to identify how her confession had gone down. Not great, she had to admit; even though Nikita had previously referenced her complicity in passing, hearing it confessed so plainly was something else entirely. She could feel her stomach lurch, and it wasn’t just the alcohol. “Why didn’t you?” Jill stammered, after a few dumbfounded moments. It wasn’t the right question. Nikita had been right. She hadn’t been ready for this.

“Michael. My fiancé. Ex. The people behind the whole thing, they’d…they’d poisoned him. Told me the only way to save him was to kill Spencer. But then Michael lied—told me he’d found an antidote some other way. Just in time, too—I’d _just_ gotten to the Oval Office.”

“So if you didn’t kill her…” Basic elimination: a locked room, with only two people inside. If the first hadn’t pulled the trigger… Jill felt her throat grow dry. 

“Once Michael told me he was safe, I tried to warn Spencer—told her she had people in the White House working against her. I thought it’d give her a chance. Except then she picked up the gun I was going to use and shot herself in the head.”

Even though Jill knew what Nikita was going to say, it took a moment for the actual words had said to register in her head. The assassin might as well have been stringing together random syllables. Hell, random syllables made _more_ sense.

And yet, why wouldn’t it be possible? Once the fabric of what they knew to be true began unraveling—which, with Jill, had happened in September 7, 2010—everything was possible. Including this.  The problem wasn’t that this was any more or less impossible than anything she’d imagined. It was that she’d never considered this particular permutation of the truth.

Or what it said about Nikita. What _did_ it say?

Apparently, all her thinking had been apparent on her face. “Yeah, that’s how I’ve been feeling,” Nikita commented, glumly. “And no matter what I do, I can’t make that work, in my head.”

Jill pushed away thoughts of Nikita the would-be killer. “Why not? Isn’t this the sort of thing Division would do?”

Now it was Nikita’s turn to find herself opening her mouth without nothing to say, and seconds passed before she spoke again. “I hadn’t thought of it quite that way. But no. I mean, They—we—Division—it did some similar things—replacing world leaders we wanted out of the way with doubles. But never at this level. We couldn’t even if we’d wanted to. It’d require impossible levels of access, and there’d be no way to reliably keep up the ruse for more than a few minutes.  Not to mention, a switch would have been noticed in the autopsy report, which is why I asked about it earlier. That was Spencer, I’m sure of it.”

Jill ignored her desire to ask about those leaders. Not relevant, right now. “So how did they do it? Blackmail?”

“No, that doesn’t make any sense. What could be worth killing oneself over? What’s more, Spencer wasn’t the only person who was compromised. I was led into the Oval Office by a Secret Service agent, who definitively knew what was going on—he even gave me the gun.”

“Brainwashing?”

“Not as unlikely as you’d think. Still, it’s the same problem as replacing the president. You’d need time to do it, and there’s no way Spencer could ever be out of pocket long enough.  And in any case, if you could brainwash the President, why kill her?”

Jill knew this one. “Lots of reasons. Installing a more reliable replacement. Weaken trust in the government. Increase paranoia, cement the surveillance state, obtain pretext to start a war, send the stock markets crashing, as a distraction from something even bigger…or maybe…”

“What?”

“Maybe it was never about Spencer. Maybe it was all about you, about putting you in the position you are now.”

Nikita’s expression morphed into one of wide-eyed horror. “Jill, do you realize how insane that sounds?”

“Why? Is it more insane than anything else?”

Jill watched as Nikita’s features slowly relaxed. “No. You’re right.” She grabbed her wineglass from its position on the floor, but seemed to reconsider: rather than drink, she simply stared at the ripples made by the moving wine before finally continuing. “There’s this woman, Amanda. She was Division’s psy-ops expert—the one who made sure we were mentally up for the task of killing people and remained useful afterwards. She spent the last year trying to teach me these…she called them lessons. Your idea would be just like her.”

So that was Amanda. There was a story there, she could tell. _Later_. “I sense a ‘but’.”

“This can’t be that. Or at least, not just that. Maybe if she were working alone, but she isn’t, and I can’t see how the people she’s working her would allow her to do this just to let her get some sick pleasure out of it.”

There it was again. That sensation that she was missing vital information.  Granted, Nikita was probably never going to tell her everything, but one could still convey a sense of the larger picture without revealing its details. This was not what was happening here.  If anything, it was the opposite: Nikita was supplying colors, but no canvas, and it was just making a mess.   

“Can I ask you something?”

Nikita shrugged. 

“What happened to Division? You’ve been talking around it, and it’s…well, it’s confusing me.” Even compared to the mystery of the President’s assassination, the fate of the black-ops group seemed, in several ways, like the bigger story. There had been reports throughout the past two days about an abandoned underground bunker in Jersey which seemed to be Division’s, but which answered no questions. It vexed.

“You’re right. Sorry. It’s just…it’s how I was trained to divulge information. Give only what you need to.” 

“I’ve noticed,” Jill responded, trying for lighthearted ribbing but managing instead to express how frustrating it felt to have that approach used on her.

Nikita set down her wine glass. “Well, long story short: a year ago, we won. Ryan—Ryan Fletcher—went to the White House and told the president about Percy, while my friends and I invaded Division and killed him. _I_ killed him. But Division was still there—more than three hundred of the best assassins in the world, who’d been told they’d been working for their country and were now a very inconvenient liability. And so Ryan and I made a deal with the president: we two would run Division, keep it in line, use it to bring in or eliminate any agents who went rogue, and once that was done, we’d get our freedom.”

“Huh. That sounds…” There were too many available words, all perfectly appropriate.

“Ironic,” Nikita supplied. “So we all thought. Still, I wasn’t going to let the people at Division die or go to jail—not like that—and not for the crime of being kidnapped and lied to.” 

 _And all the killing_ , Jill thought, while remaining silent. If there was anyone who didn’t need the reminder, it was Nikita. “Who knew about this?”

“Almost no one. Grayson and Spencer knew about it. I don’t know if the new president knows. The C.I.A. Director at the time, Morgan Kendrick, knew.  So did Evan Danforth—he was our liaison to Spencer. There’s others who knew bits and pieces.”

Two things occurred to Jill. The first was that the timing of events, if she wasn’t mistaken, placed Nikita’s takeover of Division at around the time Charles Grayson’s presidency first began to collapse. Calling that particular bit of timing suggestive was an understatement. The second was that all but one of the people Nikita had named were now dead—the lone survivor, Grayson, was now a private citizen and had in the past two days erected an impressive wall of lawyers from which to hide behind—which among other things, helped explain some of the current chaos. She imagined the people currently investigating were finding out a whole lot of unpleasant things about President Spencer. Something to ask about later, or to research on her own. “So you had access to the president?”

“More or less. Ryan met with Spencer and Danforth periodically, at the White House—we had a protocol. I initially thought that might have been why Amanda wanted me—access—but that was clearly not it.” Which supported, Jill thought, the theory that it was all ultimately about Nikita. That too she kept to herself.    

“Anyway, that’s what happened, until a few weeks ago, when a group of agents who thought they’d have a better chance of surviving without Division staged a mutiny—and I can’t say I blame them. They did what I couldn’t—Division is gone.” 

Which explained the empty base, assuming that had actually been Division. “So you’re saying that 300 assassins are now running loose?”

“Pretty much. We took care of the worst of them—the ones that had initially gone rogue. Almost all of them, anyway. The ones that are still around aren’t likely to cause trouble—they have too much to lose. But yeah.”

“That’s…” _Not exactly reassuring_. Even with Nikita as a compelling counterfactual. Jill’s thoughts then briefly turned to the Man in the Suit: his presence for the last few years felt newly comforting, in a world with three hundred assassins. Except that now he was apparently missing. 

“So that’s it, I think,” Nikita said, bringing Jill’s thoughts back to her apartment. “Anything else you’d like to know?”

Jill considered it. She had a million other questions, but first she needed time to properly process the answers to the one’s she’d asked, and she wasn’t sure Nikita had answers anyway. What’s more, the combination of drink, sleepiness, the time, and posture were causing several factions within her body to rise up in mild protest. “I think I’m good.” She tried to clamp down on a yawn and failed.  “You know, I used to find conspiracy theories reassuring,” she said, with a lightness that had not been there a moment earlier. The reporter part of her had apparently gone to sleep on her, as had her critical thinking functions. 

“Oh?”

“I mean, they’re all terrifying, when you think about them. But at the same time, I liked the idea that _somebody_ had a plan. Even if it’s a terrible one.” It’s not as if the status quo was much better; it just meant that terrible things happened without a purpose.  “And in a way, they’re optimistic. If all the bad things in the world occur because of one hundred bad people, it just means that you only need to deal with one hundred people to fix things.”

Nikita raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I’ve thought that way sometimes. Trust me, though, that’s not how it works.” Jill watched as Nikita retrieved her forgotten wineglass and took an incongruously elegant-seeming gulp. “And now that you know the truth?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t say I don’t feel vindicated, even if I didn’t uncover any of this myself. At the same time, the idea that killing the president is step one in anything scares the crap out of me. And then there’s you.”

“Me?”

Jill considered her next words. She had planned to keep this to herself indefinitely, but here and now, she didn’t see the point. “Before I met you, I was…spiraling. Slowly. I was doing okay, but I had, like, no margin for error. Then you came along and you saved me and you helped me get justice for Jeremy and helped my life get to a place I absolutely love, and…well, it’s just hard to see the conspiracy as this great big bad when it also gave me all of that. Does that make sense?”

Nikita’s gaze grew distant, as if in reminiscence. “It does.”

\----

As she waited at her table for her breakfast order to be ready, her energy and wits returned to her after a night of sound sleep and hydration, Jill considered Nikita’s revelations from the night before.

She’d been wrong, she now realized. She’d imagined that once she had all the facts at hand, a way forward would present herself—the truth would illuminate, and she’d find a way to utilize her assets—not-inconsiderable investigative acumen, persistence, a certain amount of freedom of movement—to help Nikita. All the truth had done, however, was cause her to share—and understand—Nikita’s paralysis. Where did one even begin? 

Actually, no, the answer to that was actually plain: one began where the hundreds of other people currently investigating had begun, in a road that definitively led to answers. Problem was, those answers likely helped Nikita not at all.  

The only option, really, was to do nothing, and pay attention to what developed, a choice that left a sour taste in Jill’s mouth. While waiting was very much a valid journalistic technique, one of her favorite investigative journalism professors had often said, it was also one that people often ignored, as it granted very little in the way of job satisfaction.

Then there was the fact of Nikita’s innocence, if one could call it that. She hadn’t killed Spencer, but as she herself had admitted, that she hadn’t had been mostly accidental.

Jill had always known Nikita had been a killer. Between her skill set and her admission that she’d been part of the group that had killed Jeremy, there was no way she could have been otherwise, and neither of those things had been a secret. Nevertheless, she had managed to convince herself that Nikita was an assassin the same way she herself had been a journalist , those first months after graduation, even though none of her pitches had ever been accepted, let alone gotten to publication. She’d gotten quite good at keeping that pretense; after all, if The Man in the Suit could stop killers without ever having to do anything worse than shooting them non-lethally in the limbs, why couldn’t Nikita? It was, she supposed, part of why she could find her innocence—there was that word again—so easy to believe.

The most concerning part, though, was how much the shift in perception didn’t change things. As Jill went and picked up her completed order, she found herself growing enthusiastic. Despite everything, the idea of having breakfast with Nikita, of getting to make conversation, help her heal and make her smile, and of, in return, getting to bask in her full, unfettered Nikitaness (not that their interactions ever felt that coldly transactional) still made her feel heart-racing, drunk-on-nothing, get-the-story _happy_. Would there be a point at which she wouldn’t feel that way? What could possibly do it, if admitting that she’d planned to kill the president didn’t? 

These thoughts consumed her as she walked back to her apartment and opened the door, only to find Nikita sitting on the couch, bewigged, dressed, made up, and—most importantly—packed, her bag lying, closed, at her feet.  “You’re leaving?” Jill said in place of a greeting, as felt her cheer seep out of her. “Is this because of yesterday?”

Nikita’s expression was pained, her stance suddenly awkward, as if she couldn’t decide whether to stand and close the distance between them, or remain seated. “Oh, Jill, no. You’ve been amazing. It’s just…I need to move on. For my sake. And yours. You need your normal life back.” 

 _But I never asked for that_ , she didn’t say. Yes, Nikita was right on the abstract, and Jill knew she couldn’t host the fugitive indefinitely, or even for very long. At the same time, that her stay would end before it was forty-eight hours old felt deeply unfair. “Can’t you at least stay to eat?” She reached into the bag and pulled out one of the burritos in its aluminum foil wrapper, and walked towards Nikita to hand it to her, as if the sight of it would change anything. “I bought breakfast—burritos. They’re really good.” It was a shitty compromise, but she’d take it all the same. 

Nikita mouth spread into a wan guilty little smile, as she accepted the meal. “Thank you. I think I may just take it with me, though.”

Jill let herself drop into the couch next to Nikita, not bothering to hide her disappointment. Her eyes wandered, looking for something besides the woman beside her to focus on, and eventually resting on the light that indicated that her D.V.R. was on.  “So you’re leaving,” she finally said. “Wouldn’t it be better to wait, though, until people have left for work?” She imagined Nikita taking the elevator to the lobby, trapped as it dawned on her fellow passengers—passengers with cell phones and cameras and who were more than likely to keep up with the news—who exactly it was they rode with.

Jill could feel Nikita’s eyes upon her. Her answer was immediate, as if the idea required no consideration. “In some ways, yes.  But it’s a trade-off: people pay more attention to people when they’re alone than when they’re part of the crowd, especially to people who are not supposed to be there. And one of the things they teach in Division is that people don’t see what they consider to be normal.  Remember when you were framed?” Indeed, they’d managed to move around more or less unimpeded across several states with (almost) no one batting an eye. Of course, Jill’s B.O.L.O. hadn’t been aimed at everyone in the entire continent. 

“Hard to believe that you’re ever unnoticed, the way you look,” Jill said, trying to force some levity to the situation.

“Thank you,” Nikita answered, without a trace of modesty. “You’d be surprised, but just in case, that’s what the wig and makeup are for. If you’re going to be noticed, make sure people notice the wrong thing.” She’d done a good job of that then, Jill noted: the, dark blue wig, styled into a short bob that subtly made her face look rounder than it was, had been the first thing about Nikita that had drawn her eye as she entered. The make-up, meanwhile, gave her the appearance of carefree party girl on a walk of no shame.

“Do you want me to go down with you?  Help sell the girlfriends story?” Jill said, the words ringing pathetic in her ears. For practical purposes, there was no difference between saying good-bye to Nikita at her apartment and saying it in the lobby. Practicality wasn’t the consideration here.

“Have you used it with anyone?”

“No,” she said, now wishing that hadn’t been the case. The question confused her. “Does it matter?”

“Well, that was a story in case someone had seen or heard us together, or asked about the person in your apartment. I’d rather no one connect us in the first place, if they haven’t—it’s easier for both of us, that way.  In fact, it might be helpful if you’d give me the name of someone in your floor who might have strangers around—preferably someone people don’t talk to a lot.” 

“I think you may be overestimating how much everyone in this building knows one another, or cares.”

“Funny.  Still, it’d be good to have. Especially if, like you said, I’m not likely to go unnoticed.”

“Fine,” as her eyes focused on a really interesting spot on the wall identical to all the other ones around it, she considered the neighbors she knew. “There’s Samuelle—he’s a guy—from apartment 512. Keeps to himself. Acts as if everyone else is an inconvenience to him. I don’t think anyone knows anything about him.” The first time sharing an elevator with had been enough to dread all future prospects of the same; not that he’d done anything improper, per se—he simply did not seem to be made to interact with other people, and had the ability to make his discomfort become everybody else's.

“That’ll work.”  

In the silence that followed, Jill finally turned to face Nikita. How in the world had she managed to make to make her apartment feel so different? Stupid question: she knew exactly how and why. “So, I guess this is good-bye, then.” He had no more cards to play. “Do you know where you’re going yet?”  

“I have an idea. I can’t tell you, though—it’s safer that way.”

“Need to know; I get it. Before you go, though, there’s something I want to give you.” Jill stood and strode into the kitchen, where she retrieved a half-full large zipper bag from the drawer she’d hidden it the day before, and returned to the living room. “I got these for you, for when you’re hungry,” she said, as she handed the bag to Nikita.

The bag contained fifteen high-calorie protein bars, of assorted brands and flavors, obtained after the interview with Detective Carter. “I got them at GNC yesterday. It’s not a lot, and I didn’t know which ones you’d like, but they’re all technically vegetarian. I hope they help.”

For a moment, Nikita looked lost, thrown hopelessly off-script. “Jill… Thank you, so much. They’re fantastic.” She looked upwards to meet Jill’s eyes, and after a brief moment of contact, Jill found herself averting her gaze. She couldn’t deal with being seen with so much awe. 

Jill watched as Nikita turned her attention to the bag, scanning its contents. Once satisfied, Nikita left the couch and knelt down to place the protein bars in her duffel bag. Once she reclosed it, she grabbed hold of its strap, and after standing, slung the whole thing on her right shoulder. “I should go. Come here,” Nikita said, motioning for a hug. Jill approached the smaller woman, and as she placed her hands at each side of Nikita’s upper back and felt her arms on her own, she gave in. 

Jill had not planned to kiss Nikita. She had not expected for Nikita, after a startled nanosecond, to give into the moment and kiss her in return, or for her right hand to move to the back of Jill’s head, gently but very firmly holding her close. It was brief, as kisses went, and did not exist as a prelude to anything else, but as something in and of itself, existing within its own self-contained universe and wordlessly communicating everything that needed to be said.  At the same time, the moment savoring the woman’s lips and the way they reacted to her own suggested that if things were to go further, Nikita would bring to it all of the energy and passion and skill she brought to everything else.  But they wouldn’t. Not for want of mutual affection or incompatible sexualities—not an issue, Jill was now certain—but because the circumstances that would make it possible would likely never present themselves in this universe. In the end, it all came down to timing. Costly knowledge, that, and yet Jill was glad to have it and extremely glad to have paid the price.    

“I’m sorry,” Jill said, after their lips parted. She wasn’t, at all, or at least not in the way she would have been if things had gone differently, but liberties had been taken, and it was important to acknowledge them, even as she committed the taste and smell of Nikita to memory.

“Don’t be,” Nikita said, her smile somehow transparently suggesting amusement, satisfaction, gratitude and affection, and not an ounce of regret. “Thank you. For everything.” That the assassin was the less flustered of the two felt like yet another bit of horrible unfairness. And yet, there she was, her Nikita aura unabated and still holding a hint of the divine.

“Stay safe,” Jill finally said, the words sounding inane as they came out of her mouth. “And afterwards, when you’ve cleared your name…don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t. Once it’s over, you’ll be the first reporter I talk to. I owe you an exclusive. Good-bye, Jill.”

With that, there was nothing else to do but for the two women to pull apart and to head to the hallway outside, ensure that the coast was clear, and for Jill to watch as Nikita walked towards the elevator, looking for all the world as someone who was supposed to be there.  Once she’d disappeared, Jill re-entered her apartment, picked up the food container from the kitchen table, and sat down. After eating breakfast, she called JoAnne to let the _Post_ know that she would not be at the paper until the afternoon. She needed time for herself.  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Chapter Twelve: "Nina and Tatiana"  
> Wherein Sydney deals with family and meets Alexandra Udinov, while Rachel discovers that they're not the only one interested in the Russian heiress.  
> \----
> 
> Claudia Monarch is taken from _BrainDead_ , the short-lived space-bugs-invade-the-U.S.-Senate TV show by the creators of _The Good Wife_ , where she serves the role of obvious Rachel Maddow stand-in.


	12. Nina and Tatiana, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Sydney deals with family and meets Alexandra Udinov, while Rachel discovers that they're not the only one interested in the Russian heiress.

**Udinov Estate, Pinksy Forest, Russia**

**Twelve Days after the assassination of President Kathleen Spencer**

For years, Sydney had associated the concept of power with Irina Derevko. No one, in her experience, had wielded it more comfortably and effortlessly. Even Sloane, for all his squirmy resourcefulness and criminal genius, had usually acted as if obstacles had proper weight.

It was alarming, then, the way Alexandra Udinov reminded Sydney of her mother. The girl sitting before them behind a mahogany desk probably as old and valuable as any Rambaldi artifact was barely of drinking age, and was currently in the process of being extorted for information: she shouldn’t look as if she were holding all the cards. The sensations weren’t identical: Udinov couldn’t fill Sydney with that combination of doubt and longing the way Irina could. But that confidence, that condescending aura that seemed to say “Nothing you do or say can even begin to compare to the worst I’ve faced” was far too familiar. Had her mother been that way, at twenty-one?

Sydney remembered being twenty-one. She’d been a field agent for almost a year and still felt giddy every time she was congratulated after a mission. The idea of having a secret side her friends knew nothing about had not yet lost its luster.  

Of course, Sydney was no longer twenty-one. She wasn’t twenty-seven, either. The things within herself that had made her a viable tool for her mother to use were no longer there, and perhaps more importantly, she now knew understood how she had worked.  Irina’s power, Sydney had come to realize, had been largely sleight of hand, the result of playing pieces arranged just so, and not, as it had seemed then, something that could be replicated casually in all occasions. And while her mother’s performance had been no less effective because of that, it had still been, in the end, performance. She was not invincible, nor was the threat she represented insurmountable. 

Beside Sydney stood Rachel, her expression controlled and neutral, the result of years of experience—seven, now, since they’d first worked together. Sydney wondered how her former protégé, who had never met Derevko, perceived the Udinov girl.

“So, you wanted to meet me,” said Alexandra, sounding almost bored. She was accompanied, too, by her so-called personal assistant Sonya Valentine, who Sydney could tell was silently appraising both her and Rachel, much like she herself had done with Udinov two days before.  “Why?”

**\----**

**Moscow**

**48 Hours Earlier**

Across from the Kremlin, the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski loomed, foreboding. 

“Okay, let’s go through this again,” Sydney said, her Russian still feeling foreign in her ears, even after two days speaking little else. It really had been too long. “Who am I?”

Nadezhda, across from Sydney in the driver seat of her SUV, rolled her eyes, not caring to hide her exasperation. “You are Nina Burova. You are my co-worker, here to take pictures of Alexandra Udinov for my article. I know my part.” Her tone sounded far too familiar, in both senses of the word. They'd known each other for little more than a day, but she was not shy about ruffling feathers. _Cousins_.

Still, if Sydney were being honest, the preparation was more for herself than anyone else. When she’d contacted Katya to request operational support for this mission, she’d expected, well, operational support. She had not expected her aunt to make it conditional—although in retrospect, of course it would be—or that she’d use it to extort Sydney and Rachel’s presence at what was essentially—or exactly like—a Derevko family reunion. It had left her entirely out of sorts, and she still hadn’t fully recovered.   

She had always known, in the back of her mind, that she still had family. Nadia, during her search for answers about their mother, had told Sydney about the (presumed) child of one of Irina’s sisters, and there had never been any reason to believe there weren’t others. At the same time, those relatives had never felt real to Sydney—not like her parents, Nadia, or even Sloane. That they were all presumably at the other side of the world—Russians, every last one of them—had only helped that separation. Sydney, despite her attempts to connect to her mother a decade ago, had always been a Bristow. 

Now, after meeting not only her cousins, but their partners and children and most surprisingly of all, her mother’s mother , she was being forced to reconsider.  If she didn’t think of herself as a Derevko, it was largely because she had no idea what that meant.   

For one, it meant that she was cousin to Nadezhda, award-winning writer for the Russian _Vogue_ and the linchpin of their current operation. As Katya had correctly discerned, it wasn’t enough to obtain access to Alexandra Udinov’s belongings. They’d need access to her as well, in order to both get a proper sense of her, and keep track of her while they inspected her room. Who better to grant them that than one of the country’s most celebrated celebrity profilers? And so, while Rachel made her way into Udinov’s suite at the hotel, Sydney would get a direct look at the heiress herself, as Nadezhda’s photographer. 

“How do I look?” Sydney asked her cousin. Their dresses had come from the _Vogue_ fashion closet, which, Sydney had quickly noted, had a selection that was better, by far, than anything SD-6 or the C.I.A. had ever made available to her. The wig, a severe strawberry-blond bob, was one Nadezhda had selected after emphatically vetoing Sydney’s initial choice.  She wasn’t sure it fit with the strapless, full-length purple Gucci her cousin had found for her, but she hadn’t cared enough to question the sartorial choices.

“I chose your dress. What do you think?” Sydney had been about to object when Nadezhda spoke up again. “You look fine.”

“Thank you,” Nadezhda herself, Sydney noted, looked fantastic in her suit—striking, rather than beautiful, and owning it. The resemblance to Katya was obvious. 

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

Tonight, the Baltschug Kempinski would be home to the gala closing out a symposium and fundraiser on human trafficking hosted by a certain N.G.O. as part of efforts to combat the practice in Eastern Europe. As Sydney understood it, Udinov, who was reportedly being considered for a position as a U.N. Special Envoy on the matter, was nothing more than a last-minute replacement for one of the original speakers; if the media were to be believed, however, she’d been practically responsible for planning and executing the entire event. Sydney and Nadezhda followed the throngs of people in formal dress walking towards to the banquet hall, and once there, took their seats at the table some twenty feet from the stage. Occasionally, Sydney would take photographs, as befitted her alias. Her fashion photography wasn’t up to _Vogue_ ’s standard, but she knew her way around a camera.

“Fuck me, it’s the prince of Georgia,” Nadezhda exclaimed. She had not yet had a drink.

Sydney turned her gaze to the direction indicated by her cousin’s. She hadn’t been keeping up with European royals, but the man Nadezhda referred to, at a table near the front of the hall along with a female companion, did indeed carry himself with princely bearing. “Is that normal? With the occupation of South Ossetia and all?” Sydney asked.

“It’s not. If Prince Erik held any political power, a visit like this would be news.”

“And now?”

“Well, it’s not exactly scandalous but it is…”—she took a moment before switching to English—“sketchy.”

“Maybe he just really believes in fighting human trafficking,” Sydney opined, resisting, for a moment, the temptation to also respond in her first language.

“Maybe,” her cousin replied, skeptically. 

Sydney watched as the prince and his companion were approached by two others. The first Sydney recognized as Maryam Hassan, a Nobel Prize winner and activist. The second was their target, who approached Erik with some familiarity. As she pondered the implications of this connection, Sydney was interrupted by an oracle. Or Oracle, anyway. 

“Phoenix, do you copy?” Sydney heard Rachel say through her ear-piece, the old A.P.O. code name sounding out of place five years later. “I’m in.” 

\----

Rachel—Tatiana Baklanova, for the next few hours—was feeling nostalgic. She had missed this. Dressed in a Baltschug Kempinski room attendant uniform, she had parked her cleaning cart in front of the hotel’s Linley Suite, where Alexandra Udinov, according to the hotel’s records, currently stayed. The motions felt _right,_ in a way her actual job rarely did.  

While Rachel did not, in general, regret her work for the I.S.A., she had never been able to recapture, while there, the satisfaction she’d felt working for A.P.O., or even The Shed. The irony had not escaped her: Northern Lights existed in the dark. It was dirty, messy—yet necessary—work, which left little room for satisfaction. Conversely, there had always been something comfortingly…sterile about her A.P.O. work. It was more like what she’d imagined spy work to be like, growing up watching her father’s favorite James Bond movies—all space-age technology and hidden tools. While the particulars of Research still blew her programmer mind away, more than a year after she’d learned them, the artificial intelligence still existed at a remove: as her co-worker Hersh had once told her during one of their rare moments of small talk, their job would be the same no matter where their intel came from. The true tools of their trade were weapons, and while it had taken a while for Rachel to admit it, “assassin” described that trade much more accurately than “spy”.  There was no Marshall to give her fiendishly clever bits of technology before every mission, because there was no need for it. Killing people didn’t require cleverness.   

Come to think of it, there was no Marshall now. His legacy lived on, however, in the form of the various pieces of technically stolen tech that he gave her every birthday and Christmas, such as the skeleton key-card app he’d installed on her phone. Unseen by anyone—Sydney, from her position at the conference, had hacked into the hotel’s surveillance network and currently kept track of the floor’s hallways for her—she broke into the room. 

“Phoenix, do you copy?” Rachel asked through comms, the old A.P.O. codename doing nothing to ease the nostalgia. “I’m in.”

“Copy, Oracle,” came Sydney’s response on a voice that wasn’t hers; the two hadn’t had the opportunity to program in her voice onto the text-to-voice program they now used. “Time to snap some pictures.”

\----

Sydney and Nadezhda were not alone at their table. Sitting with them were Sergei Morozov, who had made his way to the lower end of the millionaire scale as creative director at a local advertising company (“a more handsome Don Draper,” he’d said, relishing his role as the butt of the joke), and Sofia, his wife of twenty five years (“and muse” according to Sergei) and a former model who had reinvented herself as an accountant for the same advertising firm. Their daughter, Maria, had travelled to Japan to spend a semester, and had gone missing. It had never been conclusively proven that she’d fallen into the clutches of human traffickers—they usually went for more disadvantaged girls, and would have almost certainly issued some sort of ransom demand once they’d realized what they had—but the Morozovs had chosen to investigate that possibility nevertheless, and in the process had learned, in detail, about a world that terrified them. While their efforts to help combat human trafficking had brought them no closer to Maria, it had allowed them a measure of comfort, and permitted them to sublimate large amounts of their grief into something less paralyzing. They were great fans of Alexandra Udinov and her story, and had thought nothing of paying to see her speak, and perhaps even speak to her. 

“Have either of you visited Japan?” Sofia asked. She was on her second glass of water, Sydney noticed, and had refused wine when offered.

“Three times,” Nadezhda said.

“Twice,” Sydney said, automatically, her eyes never wavering from her tablet. Her meandering attention to her tablemates was rude, she was aware, but there had been no other choice: Rachel needed the operational support, and there had been no one else who could provide it. And while both Nadezhda had claimed that she could deal with Udinov perfectly fine on her own, Sydney had wanted to be there in person. Fortunately, the Morozovs had accepted her cousin’s explanation that Nina was doing some now-or-never scheduling to book a shooting for model Olga Kucherova, and she could follow the conversation easily enough, even as she ensured that her partner didn’t receive any unwanted guests. 

(It had actually been five trips to Japan, the first being during her third mission for SD-6. But that had been Sydney, not Nina.)

“Maria loved Japan,” continued Sergei. Sydney, sensing the more serious demeanor, turned her attention on the former father. “It started out because of those cartoons, but eventually she became besotted with all of it. She bought a genuine Japanese cookbook when she was sixteen, and then was surprised when it was all in Japanese. So she learned it. The entire language. Being there, I could almost see what had captivated her.”

“She loved the country,” echoed Sofia. “It did not love her. Every day we were there, it was a constant battle. Even when they weren’t outright dismissing us, they’d act like the search for her was an inconvenience, just because she wasn’t Japanese. Although I guess people are that way with foreigners everywhere.”

For a moment, nobody responded, and Sydney could feel the change in the atmosphere as everyone considered what the older woman had said. The situation was a lot more nuanced than that, Sydney felt, but Sofia wasn’t exactly wrong, either.

“I’m sorry,” Sergei said. “We’ve killed the mood.” 

The foursome’s halting attempts to recover their previous rhythm were cut short by the arrival of a fifth person to the table, a pretty woman of around thirty who Sydney had seen around Udinov. 

Sonya Valentine.

“Excuse me, Ms. Derevko?” The woman said, her British accent surprising Sydney, but only for a moment.  “My name is Sonya—Alexandra Udinov’s assistant. I’ve been told to tell you that she’s ready for you now.” 

\---- 

A cursory scan of the Linley Suite suggested that Alexandra Udinov had not made herself at home. Surprising, for someone with Udinov’s party-girl reputation and history of drug addiction. Then again, Rachel had no insight into those experiences; perhaps neatness is what prevented the heiress from spiraling amidst all the stimuli. 

After donning a pair of surgical gloves, Rachel proceeded to toss the place with long-practiced efficiency. Careful to conceal her identity, if not her presence—no need to ensure that doors remained open at the same angle they’d been when she’d entered, or even, really, that things were where she found them—Rachel opened drawers, lifted mattresses, and rummaged through luggage, looking for anything that seemed useful or relevant. Whenever she spotted something worth a second look, she blinked twice in quick succession to snap a picture with her camera contact lenses. She didn’t have the time or the equipment to see the pictures herself, but Sydney, who automatically received copies on her tablet, could, and the older spy occasionally offered commentary or suggestions.

The more thorough look at the room only strengthened Rachel’s initial impressions: whoever Alexandra Udinov and her roommate were, they were shockingly disciplined, to a suspicious degree. It seemed almost military, the neatness, which wasn’t necessarily unexplainable in the heiress’ case, given what Rachel had learned of Alexandra’s late father, but still managed to feel incongruous. The sole exception was the bathroom, which revealed traces of use and carelessness which Rachel found reassuring.

There were no laptops, which was unfortunate but not especially surprising: as Sydney opined after Rachel had noted it, Alexandra and Sonya would have likely taken those with them downstairs. 

Of particular interest to Rachel was Alexandra’s wardrobe, which bothered her for reasons she couldn’t quite  discern. It was all perfectly appropriate for who Alexandra was publicly—a socialite attempting to adopt a more serious image—with a combination of high-end labels, in styles and cuts selected to suggest maturity and professionalism. And yet there was something missing—particularly when placed in contrast with her roommate’s own clothes. Or maybe she was just imagining it. As she took pictures, she wondered if Nadezhda would be able to provide any insights.

Also notable: no alcohol. The minibar provided with the room was utterly empty, with no evidence that its contents had been consumed.  Rachel tried to recall if she’d read anything about Udinov that indicated teetotaler tendencies, but could remember nothing in particular. Again, she supposed it made sense, for a former addict; it made far less sense for someone described as the Russian equivalent of the Kardashians.  

With nothing especially revelatory or condemning found in the easily accessible areas, it was time to move on to the safe, located inside the suite closet and opened without trouble thanks to another of Marshall’s apps. As paydirt went, its contents were interesting, if not especially compromising—twenty thousand euro, twenty thousand dollars, fifty thousand rubles, a locked gun case large enough to hold two small handguns (or perhaps single larger one) and a little bit extra besides—Rachel didn’t bother to open it. More intriguing still were a series of passports and identification documents _not_ in the names of Alexandra Udinov and Sonya Valentine. Absolutely nothing to tie either person to Nikita. After making sure to snap pictures, Rachel took all of the passports; while they were probably quite replaceable, given Udinov’s access, with any luck their absence would be concerning enough to their owners to give Rachel and Sydney some leverage.  She placed the passports in her apron pockets, replaced them with the burner phone she and Sydney had purchased for the mission, closed the safe, and returned to a standing position.

Upon turning around, Rachel noticed a small air vent whose opening faced the safe. Inspired, she used a screwdriver from her Swiss Army knife—the closest things she’d brought to a weapon—to open it.  Once all the screws were removed, she stepped to the side and pulled out the covering. Inside the shaft was what she’d hoped to find: a small surveillance microphone, transmitting wirelessly.

_Phoenix, I found something_ , she texted Sydney. _Somebody’s listening into Alexandra’s room_. And if the person who had placed the bug was currently listening in, they now knew that someone else was in Alexandra’s room, and possibly even that they’d been found out. 

Had Udinov noticed that she had been bugged? Had she herself placed the mike, as a precaution against intrusion? It seemed unlikely, given the lack of similar equipment in the room. In any case, she was clearly much more than an heiress-turned-sex slave-turned-party girl-turned-diplomat.

_Phoenix, I’m done. I’ll meet you at the exfil point_. It had been the work of ninety minutes to search the entire room, and by the time she was done, Rachel was damn glad that whoever Udinov was, she hadn’t chosen to stay the house-sized royal suite high-end hotels sometimes offered—she’d have never been done then. 

Rachel exited the suite and briskly pushed her cart to the elevator. After entering, she exchanged a polite smile with the woman in a hotel concierge uniform already inside—white, blonde, around Sydney’s age, fit, not unattractive—before turning around to face the elevator buttons. As she searched for the lobby button, she considered how unlikely it was for the woman behind her to be a concierge and not specifically one of the Baltschug Kempinski’s trademark Ladies in Red, who performed many of the same duties.  It was a warning sign, but as those went, it came too late: she had just begun weighing her options when she felt a gun pressed against her back.

“Don’t try anything,” said the woman, in English. “It won’t go well for you.”

\----

The sound of laughter caused Sydney to abandon her tablet again and bring her full attention back to her immediate surroundings. Its source had been Alexandra, who had been all business throughout the night, but had begun, under Nadezhda’s gentle but persistent assault, to flirt with carefreeness, or something like it. 

Sydney considered, not for the first time, how her cousin, with nothing but her experience as a women’s magazine reporter, was already well on her way to possessing the skills that would make her an excellent spy. As long as she had known her—admittedly, less than forty-eight hours—Nadezhda’s had never been anything but curt, if not downright rude. Now that she was on the job, she’d adopted an entirely different persona, one designed to place people at ease while she learned what she wanted to know.  If she could bring that to the field…

But then, perhaps that was to be expected. Nadezhda was a Derevko, after all.

Udinov wasn’t a Derevko, and yet her role-playing was equally as impressive.  On one hand, it made perfect sense: she wouldn’t have survived as long as she had if she hadn’t been able to develop some skill at performance. At the same time, that experience did not at all fully explain the level of polish shown here.  Whatever she’d been doing since her escape, her time had not been all spent indulging in hedonism.  However many years had been taken from her, she’d worked incredibly hard to regain, with interest. 

“You are currently being considered for the position of U.N. Special Envoy on Human Trafficking,” Nadezhda asked, in Russian. “You clearly have some experience on the practice, being a victim yourself. What else would you say you bring to the table, to be considered at your age?” The question had many an implication behind it, almost all unkind, but somehow Nadezhda’s  tone had stripped those away and turned it into a simple question of fact.

Alexandra’s face gave no indication that the question had offended or troubled her. After a moment’s silence, she began: “You know, I’ve been asking myself that since I was told I was being considered. I won’t speak for what Maryam was thinking when she offered the position, but this is what I concluded. Setting aside my name—you may have noticed I’m kind of famous—I have a story.  Stories are important. And I have enough privilege to truly make a difference. 

“In the end, though, I think it _is_ about my time as a victim. Not just because I know what it’s like, but because the people I’m trying to help know that I know. They know I’m not just some person in a suit; they know I know what they’ve been through, and that I understand what they need.  And this isn’t to minimize the importance of people in suits—they’re vital to the fight, and I have skills I don’t possess and probably never could. But I’d have never turned to them during my time in captivity.” 

A pitch perfect answer, given by someone who’d received no formal information to speak of past the eighth grade level, and who until recently had been happy to let people think of her as a vapid party girl. Granted, the fact that Udinov was far sharper than she cared to let people know didn’t necessarily imply a connection with Nikita, or even necessarily something criminal. But it was suggestive.  

Sydney returned to her tablet. Her assessment of Udinov largely completed, her attention was needed providing support to Rachel, ensuring that she could toss Alexandra’s room without issue, analyzing the pictures she sent, and providing input on those. Unfortunately, the more pictures came in, the more it seemed as if they were chasing a dead end. Whatever the truth about Alexandra was, there was no real indication that it was connected to their real target.

As she felt a familiar mental pinprick, Sydney noted that she still wasn’t as invisible as she had hoped to be. Sonya, the fourth person at their table, had been stealing glances at her all through the interview. She’d been subtle about it, too.  It made her wonder if “assistant”, in this particular case, also meant “bodyguard”. Sonya didn’t seem especially formidable—“mousy” was a far better word—but appearances had never meant anything, in that respect. Unfortunately, there was nothing that Sydney could do except ensure that the other couldn’t discern what she was actually doing, and their relative positions at opposite sides of the round table took care of that well enough; she could be doing anything on her tablet.

Suddenly, an incoming text. Not a spoken message. _Phoenix, I found something_. _Somebody’s listening into Alexandra’s room_. The messages were soon followed by photos of a tiny microphone. Depending on the particular factors, Rachel could very well have been made.

_Understood_ , she texted Rachel. _Clean up and get out ASAP._

Conscious of Valentine watching her and careful not to let her features betray her, Sydney considered the possibilities.

If the bug was Alexandra’s, then they were safe for the moment. Sonya aside, the heiress had brought no people with her, and given the assistant’s lack of reaction, Sydney was fairly certain that she was not currently abreast of the situation in their room. If so, it would be some time before she’d be able to do anything about it.

However, if the bug hadn’t been placed by Alexandra—which was, in the end, more likely—then all bets were off. The people who’d placed it may not be listening, but there was no sense in taking stupid chances. It was time for them—or Rachel, at least—to return to safety. 

And then, as she heard the sharp crackle of violently disconnected electronics in her earpiece, certainty replaced doubt. Worse, she had no eyes on Rachel—her partner was nowhere in Udinov’s floor that Sydney could see, and the elevator camera had been temporarily made useless by a foaming agent. 

“Excuse me,” she said hastily, interrupting the conversation between her cousin and Alexandra. I have to go to the restroom. If I’m not back by the time you need me to start taking pictures, call me.”

Walking as fast as her dress could gracefully allow her, Sydney left the banquet hall.

\----

“Don’t try anything. It won’t go well for you,” said the woman in the concierge uniform. “Phone.”

“Wasn’t planning to,” Rachel responded, in English. Apron. Right pocket.” Well, at least she had a good idea who it was had placed the mike—not that that was useful information at the moment.

“Take it out, remove the battery and SIM card, and then hand it over.” 

Rachel complied. It would be the work of a moment to go on the offensive, but her attacker needed less than that to pull the trigger and puncture her left lung. “Where are we going?” she asked, as she handed over the phone. No point in remaining silent if they’d been listening in on her for the past hour.

“Somewhere more private,” the false concierge said, her voice level and matter-of-fact. “I just need to know who you are, who you work for and what you’re doing here. Weapons?” 

“Swiss Army Knife, apron. You can check, if you want.” She hoped the woman would take the offer. It would force awkward proximity between them, and take one of the attacker’s hands out of the equation. The best odds she’d get. 

Unfortunately, the gunwoman knew that too.  “You know better than that. Take it out and drop it to the floor.” After Rachel did so, the woman kicked it to the back right corner of the elevator. “Now, press the number for the penthouse.” In other words, they weren’t going to the gunwoman’s room, but rather breaking into someone else’s. Rachel complied, blinking twice as she did so. The other woman, she noted, had already obtained access to the upper levels.

Whether by dumb or manufactured luck, no one else attempted to enter the elevator as it made its way to the topmost floor. The woman led the way out of the elevator and into the hotel’s largest suite, where a white man, brown-haired, around the same age as the woman, also in a concierge uniform, also armed, stood in wait. Worse and worse.

Rachel watched as the man aimed his own gun at her. The woman holstered her weapon and proceeded to use a wand to scan for bugs, transmitters, or other electronics; upon finding nothing useful—with the phone disabled, there was nothing useful to be found—she placed the wand inside the standard equipment spy bag that had been placed on the dining room table and then returned to Rachel. With brisk professionalism, the agent patted her down and searched her pockets for any other inconvenient equipment. “What’s this?” she asked rhetorically, as she removed the stolen passports from her apron pocket.  She gave the documents a quick look, and then placed them on the dinner table, next to the bag. 

Once that was done, Rachel was sat down on one of the dining room chairs, and her hands restrained behind her back with plastic cuffs.  She was briefly surprised at not being immobilized to a greater degree: apparently the two operatives were counting on their numbers and their weapons to keep her in line, at least for the moment.  

“So, who do you suppose she is?” Asked the man, speaking English with an accent Rachel could only identify as “British”. So, an international team of some sort?

“I’m not sure,” said the blonde. “American. Not Division. She took Udinov’s fake passports, so she wants to be noticed.”

“So she’s trying to establish contact?”

“Sounds plausible. She’ll have to tell us.” She reached into their bag and removed a camera, which she used to take a picture of Rachel—for future identification purposes, she presumed. Two could play that game.

Rachel steeled herself for the worst. Although the two operatives hadn’t been careful or worried enough to ensure that their communication wasn’t overheard, it wasn’t certain that they planned to kill her—this could just as well still turn out to be a catch and release operation. Not exactly reassuring: chances are she wouldn’t know what the plan was until it was too late. What’s more, there was still plenty of chances for badness, even if they intended to leave her relatively intact.

As if to prove Rachel’s point, the blonde approached her and then plunged a needle into her arm. As the drug coursed through her, Rachel felt her tension slackening, despite herself; while she had built up some resistance to certain narcotics and barbiturates, and would probably metabolize whatever this was faster than her captors expected, that didn’t necessarily mean they wouldn’t get something out of her before then. As her thoughts began getting away from her, she wondered, not for the first time, how Sydney had managed to continue working after giving birth. Dying wasn’t something she minded: leaving her wife and child alone?  Unforgivable.

_Should have thought about that earlier_ …

\----

While most of the Baltschug Kempinski’s floors were easily accessible through the standard elevators, the luxury suites could only be accessed via a single separate elevator in a different corridor, designated specifically for that purpose and requiring specific key cards to obtain entry into specific floors. Once the card was scanned, the button for the particular floor lit up, allowing access. Sydney didn’t have any keycard, but she didn’t need one: she didn’t know how it did it, but after a minute to scan the system, Marshall’s skeleton key-card app caused all the buttons on the panel to begin glowing. Sydney pressed the button for the topmost floor and hoped the elevator was faster than its ornate design suggested. She was already far too many precious minutes behind. 

While they’d long since stopped working together regularly, and Rachel had long stopped needing her guidance, Sydney had never stopped feeling responsible for the younger agent.  Despite all the feats she’d seen or known her to have done, part of her always saw her as that young woman in Prague, trying to put on a brave face as Sydney caused her life to collapse around her.  Eventually she’d realized: this is how her father had felt. 

Sydney arrived at the top floor, and spotted Rachel’s cart, discarded just next to the elevator door. Her knife she’d spotted on the elevator when she’d first come in, and she’d retrieved it and placed it in her purse. The hotel hallway had only one door, which was excellent for whoever stayed there, less so for her, since it meant a single point of ingress and egress, making the room eminently defensible—especially since the two people inside had at least one gun each while she herself had none. And there was, of course, Rachel, helpless and providing their opponents with even more leverage. While it wouldn’t be nearly the first time she’d faced those sort of numbers, or worse, the tactical disadvantages did not inspire confidence. 

At least she hadn’t been heard.

Sydney considered possible approaches. Her best shot would be drawing one of the two operatives outside and disarming them there, but even if she could, what then? The remaining one would notice and could just remain there with Rachel as a human shield indefinitely. Pulling the fire alarm had potential, but there was every chance the two operatives would simply ignore it, and the chaos would open the door to more exposure than she cared for. A bluff? Convince the two that they were against impossible numbers? How would she go about that?

Sydney heard her phone vibrate from within her purse. She fished it out and noticed she’d obtained a text from Nadezhda. After a moment of bemusement due to the Cyrillic, she quickly discerned its contexts. _Photos about to begin. Where are you?_ Chagrined, Sydney quickly texted back, in English:

_cant_

_tell them sorry_

_middle of something_

Her cousin would be pissed, but she couldn’t worry about that at the moment. She returned the phone to her purse, only to retrieve it again a moment later, as she was hit by an idea. Like Rachel’s, her operations phone had been tricked out by Marshall, who had installed not only the skeleton key app but a host of other special features. Most were surveillance programs—things to allow her to bluejack other phones, or break into nearby electronic systems. One of them was a weapon.

Under less fraught circumstances, Sydney would have allowed herself to smile.

Sydney first called up the skeleton key app, and then pressed the phone against the door. Once she’d ensured that the door was unlocked, she grabbed hold of the handle to ensure it wouldn’t lock again.

She then called out, in Russian: “Is there somebody there? This room is meant to be empty! Come out before I call security!” Then, as she waited for one of the two kidnappers to come to the door—possibly with some excuse, probably with a threat—she turned to the phone again and opened another of Marshall’s apps. Once prepared, she set the phone on the floor, and turned upright just in time to feel someone grab hold of the door handle from the other side and attempt to turn it.

The kidnapper didn’t get a chance to do much else. Sydney pushed the door open, just wide enough for her arm to pass through, grabbed the kidnapper’s necktie, and yanked. Taken off guard, the man couldn’t stop himself as Sydney caused him to crash against the half-closed door, once, twice. She followed this with a palm strike to the man’s nose, which caused him—finally—to drop his gun, which Sydney retrieved and used as a club to strike him twice in the head.   From first attack to last, roughly two seconds had passed.  But she wasn’t done.  Aware that the duo’s female half was now turning her attention to Rachel—not incompetent, these guys—Sydney kicked her phone into the room, closed her eyes and attempted to cover her ears, just as Marshall’s Lights-Out app went off.  

As flash-bangs went, the one Marshall had programed onto her phone lacked the full power of an actual mercury-and magnesium stun grenade, even when drawing on all of the device’s battery power. Still, it did the job, distracting the second kidnapper long enough for Sydney to close the distance between them before her opponent could get off a shot.  Sydney avoided the woman’s first blind punch, was caught off guard by a kick to the ribs, and then grabbed the woman in a chokehold until she felt her lose consciousness. 

“Phoenix?” Sydney heard Rachel yell out, her voice artificially distant-sounding, thanks to the effects of Marshall’s app. She dropped her opponent on the floor, and took a moment to allow her sense of the larger environment to return. 

Sydney turned her attention to her partner. She didn’t know what they’d drugged Rachel with, but between that and the flash grenade, the fact that she was still at all conscious and aware enough to use call signs was impressive. She gently placed her hands on Rachel’s shoulders. “It’s me, Oracle. You’re safe.  Can you stand? Can you run?” She was fairly sure Rachel couldn’t hear her, having taken the full brunt of the flash-bang, but hopefully, she was still conscious enough to understand what was going on. 

If Rachel’s nod was any indication, she did. “Phoenix! I need you to free my arms!”  She yelled.

After inspecting the plastic zip ties Rachel’s captors had used, Sydney used Rachel’s knife to cut them open.  Freed, Rachel attempted to stand; although she was wobbly, she managed to remain on her feet. From the look of things, though, Sydney was going to have to hand-hold her through the rest of their escape.

But that wasn’t a problem; the hard part was over.         

\----

After an hour trying to collect escaping thoughts, which flitted around her mindscape like mayflies, Rachel caught her first, finally. It wasn’t an especially helpful thought—merely a realization that her mouth felt too dry for comfort—but once that was done, it became much simpler to catch a second thought, and then a third, until something resembling normal consciousness emerged.  She shouldn’t have let them escape in the first place, but once the light and the noise came, followed by the effort of trying to run when sitting down felt so much better, it was just so much easier to let them go. At least her captors hadn’t gotten anything useful from her, or so she hoped.

She was no longer in a sitting position. She was laying down in a bed, and not a bad one at that—although, as her wife liked to remind her, she was in no position to judge, since she generally considered uncarpeted floors to be the lap of comfort.

Rachel missed her wife. She missed their daughter, that brilliant creation, not yet a year old. She wondered if she could get the I.S.A. to extend her leave. Probably not, given the unsanctioned nature of what she was currently up to. 

Her hands were untied. So Sydney’s rescue attempt had worked, or it had failed and she’d been left behind. Deeper thoughts were still refusing to coalesce without a fight, which suggested it hadn’t been that long since she’d been drugged—an hour or two, enough for almost anything to have happened. After determining that no good could come from feigning sleep, she hoped for the best case scenario, and opened her eyes.

“Sydney.” Success.

“Hey, Rachel,” Sydney said from her sitting position next to the bed, allowing her brilliant smile to take over her features and wash away the lines indicating worry. Rachel liked making Sydney smile. And that dress! 

 “You found me.” It was a stupid thing to say, and yet, much safer than a whole lot of other things which were also true, also self-evident, and deeply awkward for both of them.  She wasn’t _that_ addlebrained. “Thank you,” she said instead. 

“Thank _you_. Using your contact lens camera to show me what was going on was brilliant. I’m just glad I got there in time.”

So her idea had worked. The lenses were gone, she now noticed—Sydney must have removed them while she regained consciousness. Good thing too: they weren’t meant to be worn for long, and they especially weren’t made to be worn while sleeping. Sydney had not only saved her from a possible death, but also from a potential eye infection. 

Rachel fought a slight wave of nausea as she attempted to shift into a sitting position, reclining her back against the headboard. “Any idea who it was who captured me?”

Sydney shrugged. “I was going to ask you that. I didn’t get a whole lot of time to do anything besides knock them out, get you, the passports, and escape. Fortunately—thanks, again, to you—we now have pictures of the two. Maybe your people can find out who they are.” 

Probably, although never soon enough for the parts of her that were now demanding that she exact immediate retribution. “Whoever they are, they’re pros. If they hadn’t missed the camera, it would all have been over for me. How did you rescue me?” Sydney would have had to fight both of them off from the less defensible position. Not that she couldn’t do it successfully—she’d obviously done so, and from the looks of her spotless face, clothes, and arms, she’d done so without injury—but she could have just as easily failed. 

“Marshall’s Lights-Out app. It blinded them long enough for me to take them out. We’ll have to thank him. Again.”

“I really have no idea what we’d do without him.”

“I know, right?”

For a minute, there seemed to be nothing left that needed to be said. “How are you feeling?” Sydney eventually asked. “Do you need any water?”

“I think I’m fine.” Lightheaded, nauseous, disappointed and angry, but given the alternatives, she had no complaints. 

“We need to move as soon as possible,” Sydney warned, matter-of-factly. “I don’t think those two will find us, but the people staying in this room might.”

Oh, right. They hadn’t arranged a safe room beforehand, which meant Sydney would have had to improvise one. As Rachel looked around the room, other signs of habitation became clear. Among them was a sky blue bra, designed to support someone three or four times Sydney’s size, which could be seen lying on the drawer opposite the bed. It seemed its owner had had quite a bit of fun recently, a thought which—it was probably the drugs—filled Rachel with vicarious pleasure. 

“Where’s Nadezhda?”

“Gone. I called her using the room phone, told her to leave. As you can imagine, she had some words about me leaving her behind without taking all the pictures.”

“Oh, I can. Fun person, your cousin.” The comment wasn’t entirely ironic—she’d liked Nadezhda, possibly more than Sydney herself did. But then, she hadn't been forced to spend time with her. “Do you think she’ll be safe?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think those guys knew about us specifically, so she should be. In any case, if she’s anything like Katya, she should be fine.”

It took about half an hour, but Rachel eventually felt well enough to move without attracting undue attention. Taking care not to be seen—they had no idea if her captors had any friends—the two eventually made their way to the lobby, where they arranged for a cab to pick them up. They were dropped off at a restaurant Sydney knew would still be open, and after a meal—Rachel’s nausea had subsided by then, and was replaced by a hunger she could only sate by eating for two—the two returned to Katya’s home. It had been a big day, and if Alexandra reacted as they hoped she would, the next few would prove to be eventful as well.   

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My headcanon regarding Katya has her prison sentence was commuted after her cooperation in late season 4, and she has been living in Russia ever since, retired. Her family here is an offshoot of what is suggested in “Ice”. I do eventually want to write a Derevko family reunion fic, but that won’t be for a while. 
> 
> The whole bit with the prince of Georgia is obviously a nod to _Nikita_ 1.13 "Coup De Grace". The bit with the Morozovs isn’t based on any one particular thing, except possibly the memoir _Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan_ , by Jake Adelstein. 
> 
> Sydney's dress is a nod to the one Jennifer Garner wore to the 2013 Oscars. I'm not sure it would allow her the sort of mobility necessary to kick ass the way it does, but this is far from the least plausible thing to ever occur in the _Alias_ universe. 
> 
> Olga Kucherova is the Russian model Nikita digitally impersonates in 2.18 "Power".


	13. Nina and Tatiana, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sydney and Rachel finally meet Alexandra Udinov, and unearth many new questions in the process.

**Udinov Estate, Pinksy Forest, Russia**

**Twelve Days after the assassination of President Kathleen Spencer**

The Udinov estate, according to Rachel and Sydney’s research, was actually the second building at that location to carry that title. The first iteration of the mansion had reportedly burned down during the attack that had killed the Udinovs, and it had been Nikolai Udinov’s successor at Zetrov, Sergei Semak, who had later had the building restored to look identical to the original. As she entered, Rachel fought a swell of mild bitterness: built in the Norman style, the original iteration of the mansion had been, given its clone, nice enough. Considerable thought had been given to its various elements, and together, they successfully and coherently invoked age the home had not possessed. Still, given the scores of better, older, more interesting buildings that were lost to time every year, it felt deeply unfair for this to be the one to be resurrected. 

The two spies had been greeted at the door by Udinov’s aide Sonya, who, after having guards take away the two women’s cell phones and scan them, the attaché case Sydney had brought with her, and their other possessions for weapons and tracking devices (“We can’t be too careful, after the hotel,” she’d volunteered, sensibly, in English) led them, with determination and poise, to Alexandra. On her left hand she carried a tablet; Rachel wondered what secrets could be found on it, were she to get the opportunity to inspect it.

As they walked, Rachel observed that she could get very little sense of Alexandra from the mansion. The Zetrov heiress had, she remembered, been in possession of the building for more than a year, but nothing about it seemed to correspond with either the person once frequently seen in women’s magazines and tabloids, or the one who was now beginning to appear in more widely respected publications. The building, while tastefully decorated and furnished, was decorated and furnished for someone twice Alexandra’s age, possibly untouched since Semak’s day. Was there a place for Alexandra that looked and felt like an actual home?  Rachel hoped so, for the young woman’s sake. 

Sonya opened the door to a parlor, where, behind a desk Rachel suspected could pay for an Ivy League education for Gracie twice over, sat Alexandra, sporting the sort of wardrobe Rachel could technically afford, but would never allow herself to buy on a whim, and looking nothing like a party girl. The spy found herself reconsidering her ideas about the mansion; Udinov could probably feel at home anywhere.

 _We see this every day_ , Rachel found herself thinking. The advice Sydney had given her that day in the wreckage of The Shed’s headquarters had, during those first few years, served as a mantra, a prayer to calm Rachel down whenever emotions threatened to rise too close to the rim. Was she truly that nervous now, for it to bubble up like that? She didn’t feel nervous—her breath was steady, her steps firm, and she was not, as she often did, analyzing how the space could be turned to her advantage in case of a fight—not much, anyway—but maybe she and Sydney should be: for all their research, they still had no idea what they were walking into, and with their stay in Russia having once already taken a turn towards the life-threatening, there was no guarantee it wouldn’t do so again before it was all over. 

Alexandra motioned to the two seats at the opposite side of the desk, which Rachel and Sydney took. Sonya moved to her employer’s left side, where she remained standing, soldier-straight, both hands lowered in front of her, lightly pressing her tablet against her stomach.

“So, you wanted to meet me,” said Alexandra, whose English, like Sonya’s, flowed with the ease of a first language. “Why? Clearly it’s not about that photo shoot I’m still owed.” Her mouth formed a wry, taunting smile. 

 Sydney, when describing her impressions of the woman now before them, had noted an implausible coolness beneath her affability, and Rachel could easily see what she’d meant.  The theft of her passports, the attempts at coercion by the people who’d stolen them, the news that she was being surveilled by at least one party...none of it was apparent on Alexandra’s face. Very Jack Bristow, and just the tiniest bit hot.   

It was also very Nikita.

Sydney, as planned, took the lead. “You’ll have to talk to Nadezhda about that,” she responded, with a smirk of her own. “In any case, thank you for seeing us. My name is Sydney Bristow. My colleague is Rachel Gibson.” They’d had some discussions, while planning for the meeting, about the approach they would take, deciding, in the end, to go with the truth. No aliases, no wigs, no elaborate costumes—just themselves, unadorned. It had its liabilities, as gambits went, but subterfuge hadn’t been terribly productive, so far.

Alexandra’s lips tightened. “I don’t think I had too much of a choice, given that you stole my passports.”

“That’s true,” Sydney continued, allowing a measure of false embarrassment to be visible on her face. “About that”—she placed the attaché case on the table, opened it, and pulled out the stolen passports, which she placed on the desk—“We’re sorry about taking them, but we need your attention, and we weren’t sure how else to obtain it.”

Rachel observed as Alexandra took the documents and paged through them without interest before passing them to Sonya so she could do the same. Once finished, the two women shared a brief silent communication, executed with stares and gestures whose specific meanings the spy did not attempt to translate, after which Sonya returned the passports to the desk, apparently not dissatisfied. Valentine returned to her position, while Alexandra’s gaze turned back to her visitors. “Thank you, I guess,” she said.

Sydney once again reached into her attaché case and retrieved a file folder. “Now, in order to make up for the passports, we’ve brought you something else.” She passed the folder to Alexandra, who blandly looked through its contents. “It’s everything we could find on the people we told you had been surveilling you in your room—a gift.”

Once Rachel had begun looking into her assailants at the hotel, it had been only a matter of time before she’d identified the two operatives as Martine Rousseau and Jeremy Lambert, employees for the China-based private intelligence firm Decima Technologies. While she hadn’t been successful at finding what Decima actually wanted with Udinov—digging deeper would have required tripping alarms they couldn’t currently afford to trip—she and Sydney decided that there was enough to share, and hopefully enough make Alexandra easier to negotiate with. 

 “You know, you didn’t need to go through all this trouble for an appointment,” Alexandra said, as she placed the folder inside a desk drawer. “I have a secretary.”   

Rachel wasn’t sure if being a little snot was just an act or if it came naturally to Alexandra, but either way, but nothing good would come from allowing it to get to her.  “We weren’t sure you’d want them to hear what we have to say,” she answered, careful to maintain her tone neutral.

 “Scary,” Alexandra commented, with an ironic scowl. “How about my attorneys? Can they hear what you have to say?”

“I’m not sure you’d want them around either, but we’ll wait, if you want to call them,” Sydney explained. Come to think of it, why wasn’t one present? That, more than anything else, suggested that Alexandra knew this wasn’t about accounting irregularities or something having to do with Zetrov. What’s more, the fact that Valentine _was_ present suggested that she knew most or all Alexandra knew, and was trusted with that information. Useful tidbit, that. “To clarify, you’re not in trouble, Ms. Udinov,” Sydney continued. “This isn’t about you, or about Zetrov. It’s about Nikita.” There it was: their Hail Mary pass. 

Alexandra’s eyes widened as amusement brought new color to her features. “Nikita. The assassin,” she said, with barefaced disbelief.  Her gaze alternated, in rapid succession, between her two interviewers, as if waiting for the punchline, before finally settling back on Sydney. “Oh, you’re not kidding.”

Rachel wondered if it was Alexandra’s first time being interrogated like this. If so, she was handling it far better than Rachel had, in Prague. Of course, just because the Zetrov heiress wasn’t breaking down in front of them didn’t mean the game was done. “Nope,” Sydney answered. “We’ve worked with her in the past, and we were hoping to find her.”

“You and the rest of the world,” Alexandra scoffed. “The rest of the world, though, isn’t coming to me about it, so why are you?”

“Well, there’s these,” Sydney said, as she again reached into her case, and pulled out a second file folder; after paging through its contents, she selected two items and placed them on the desk. They were printouts of two color images, one of Nikita, the second of Alexandra, addressing a man at a bar; while the two women weren’t together, one could discern from the backgrounds that they were in the same venue, and the visible timestamps indicated that they’d been there at the same time. “This was a few weeks back, at the G20 summit in Toronto. It’s one of the very last instances where U.S. intelligence has been able to account for Nikita’s location before the assassination. Why were you there?”

“I don’t need to answer that,” Alexandra asserted, with the casual confidence of someone with a livelong understanding that laws were for other people— not, Rachel noted, like someone who’d spent many of her formative years in captivity. Another thing Sydney had been right about.  

“It’s true, you don’t. But then, we already know.” “That man you’re next to is Erhan Guler, Turkey’s Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. Well, not long after Spencer was killed, he contacted the C.I.A., and told them about an encounter he had with you that day. Apparently you were quite interested in some intelligence documents he was after.” It was intelligence they had only learned about in the past day, and the biggest independent confirmation of their suspicious about Alexandra. Guler had, from the looks of it, been quite happy to share his impressions of heiress, who was, he’d warned, underestimated at one’s own peril. “Do you care to deny it?” Sydney continued. 

“No, I don’t,” Alexandra answered dismissively, apparently more interested in the picture of herself, which she appraised with an air of self-satisfaction. “I look good here. Kudos to the photographer.” She slid the picture across the table. “But yeah, you got me. I’d heard I might be able to get a lead on the people who killed my parents, so I went and offered to make a deal with Guler. Is this all you have? Because I still haven’t heard how this connects me to Nikita.”

“It doesn’t,” said Rachel. “But we’re not done.”  She picked up the folder from the table and went through its contents until she found the page including the image she was searching for, which she passed to Alexandra. “Do you know who this man is?”

Unlike the first set of images, Alexandra did not take this one for a closer look. Her face softened—possibly an act, but possibly not. “Vladimir Ivanov. My…”     

“Your pimp,” Rachel finished. Bringing him up felt unfair, and part of her wanted to apologize for doing so, but she refrained: it would sound like a lie. Instead, she continued with an explanation: “Like Sydney said, we worked with Nikita, once. She helped us out with a few things, in exchange for a single favor: intel on Ivanov, including his location.” It was when searching for this intel that the A.P.O. team had come across the photo, originally taken as part of an F.B.I. organized crime operation that had amounted to nothing. “She never said why, but it was clearly important to her. So that’s two connections. Add to that the fact that you’re being surveilled by some very well-trained operatives—some _other_ well-trained operatives—and...well, that’s why we’re here.” 

Alexandra’s gaze hardened again. “Circumstantial connections. And that’s assuming you’re telling the truth about the surveillance and didn’t just place it there yourselves.”

“True. But how much do you think that distinction will matter, if we go to the C.I.A. with this? Best-case scenario, Zetrov’s lawyers spend the next few years earning their fees. Worst-case scenario, there’ll be no country in the world that will shelter you, no matter how many millions you throw at them. I wouldn’t risk it, if I were you.”

It was almost not a bluff, and Alexandra certainly knew it. “Point.”

Rachel watched as Valentine bent down and whispered something to Alexandra’s ear, after which Alexandra whispered something in return; she wondered, idly, where the two women had met. Once the conversation was over, Valentine returned to her position, and Alexandra once again addressed her guests. “Okay, now, let’s say, hypothetically, that I know something about Nikita. Why should I tell you, instead of going to the C.I.A. myself and cutting a deal for immunity?”

It was a good question, and not one many would have thought to ask, at least with such a quickness. Rachel wondered if it had been Alexandra’s idea, or if Sonya had suggested it. “Well, that you haven’t done so already, for one,” she answered.

Alexandra tilted her head reproachingly. “No, I haven’t done it because I don’t know anything about Nikita. Nice trap, though. But again: if I did know something about her, why should I tell you?”

“Because we don’t think Nikita did it,” Sydney said.  

For once, Alexandra had no immediate answer, and she instead limited herself to staring at the two women blankly. Her head turned to address Sonya, with whom she shared another nonverbal conversation. Then, apparently satisfied, Alex turned her attention to Sydney. “You don’t think Nikita did it,” she echoed, not quite a question. “That’s not a popular opinion.”  

Sydney ignored the unstated insult. “Maybe, but the people who think she killed Spencer have never met her. We have, enough to know she wouldn’t do this unless she were being coerced, and that she’s too smart to be coerced. But we can’t prove it if we don’t find her first.” 

“You actually want to help her,” Alexandra said, as if it were the most unlikely thing in the world—which, in fairness, was fairly close to the truth.   If she were smart—and Alexandra had, in the past few minutes, proven to be as sharp as brand-new barbed wire—she would no doubt realize that they’d now placed themselves at her mercy. Just as the two spies could bring down the hammer on the heiress by telling authorities what they suspected, she could do the same with them, and far more easily—there was no way this conversation wasn’t being recorded. And in the end, they, unlike her, did not have infinite money to fall back on, if necessary. “Why?”

“Because Nikita is the only lead we have on the people who actually wanted Spencer dead,” Sydney answered.  

“Not good enough,” Alexandra declared. “Try again.” God, what a brat she was. While Rachel had come around to suspect Udinov’s impudence was largely an affectation, that didn’t help make it less frustrating. 

“Alright, then.” Sydney took a breath, expelling, with it, the tension she’d been carrying with her, leaving only a sense of vulnerability.  This, in turn, changed the atmosphere of the parlor, from that of a negotiation into something far more personal.  It was one of the few tricks of the spy trade Rachel had never quite managed to pick up, and had never ceased to be impressive.  “It’s because I know how she feels.”

”About ten years ago,”—Sydney began, her face showing the strain brought upon by difficult memories—“I was...sought, in relation to a murder people thought I’d committed. There was even video to prove it—a recording of me slitting the man’s throat. I actually hadn’t done it, and the man wasn’t dead at all, but I couldn’t tell people that. The people at U.S. Intelligence doing the investigation were willing to do anything in order to learn what I knew, even perform brain surgery on me. So I ran.”

This was not a new story for Rachel. She hadn’t quite believed it when she’d first been about it, months after they’d met, and given the tone Sydney had used while telling it, it had been apparent that even she found it implausible. And yet, that worked to their advantage, being both utterly appropriate and entirely true, and at the same time implausible enough to make it an unlikely lie.  

Still, this didn’t mean that skepticism wasn’t warranted, and Alexandra was all too willing to provide it. “Why couldn’t you tell them?” she asked.

“Because I didn’t know that’s what had happened,” Sydney answered, allowing a trace of bashfulness into her tone. “This is going to sound stupid—like a bad soap opera twist—but I don’t actually have any memory of that time. My mind had been erased without my consent, and by the time this went down, I didn’t remember meeting the man, being told to kill him, saving him, or why I’d done any of it.”

“Inconvenient,” was all Alexandra said. While dismissive, it was a much more mild reaction than Rachel had expected, given the farfetchedness of the claim.

“Yes, it was,” Sydney affirmed, deadly earnest. “And I know it’s nothing like what you’ve had to face. Still, it’s why I want to help Nikita. I know what it’s like, to be tired, on the run, desperate for answers about a thing everyone absolutely knows is simple and obvious, but actually isn’t. That’s not something I would wish on anyone, especially not a friend. If you can help us, we’d be exceedingly grateful—grateful enough to keep our employers in the dark about how it was we found her.” 

Sydney’s confession over, silence filled the room. It was Alexandra’s turn to speak, and she appeared to be in no hurry to do so. 

Rachel had not always been good at reading people. She had believed she was, but then she learned that she’d been conned into believing that a mercenary group had been part of the C.I.A.  Still, she’d since gotten exponentially better at the skill, which made it all the more frustrating having to admit that she had no idea if Alexandra was buying their pitch. While she knew that the impressions she obtained now didn’t much matter, in the end—what the girl did and said now was far less important than what she did later, when she no longer wore her mask—she didn’t like how it made her feel as if the last seven years hadn’t happened.  

“Okay, say you find Nikita,” said Alexandra, breaking the silence. “How exactly do you plan to help her?”

“That will be up to her. I don’t think she needs much help hiding, for example—she’s been doing an excellent job of that on her own. On the other hand, if she wants to stop running, we can help her by guaranteeing that she’ll be treated fairly.”

“How?” asked Sonya—the first words she’d said to them since they’d entered the parlor. “You’ve said nothing about who you’re working for.”

“That’s because we’re not working for anyone,” Rachel answered. “That said, we have enough connections to U.S. Intelligence to make sure that we’re heard, if we need to—you’ve seen as much.” 

“And what happens if you’re wrong and Nikita did kill Spencer?” Alexandra asked, no longer pretending not to care. 

“Same thing. We’d have to bring her in, of course, but once that happens, we’ll make sure she’s heard, and that all mitigating circumstances are taken into account. It’s not ideal, for her, but it’s the best she’s likely to get.” At least from the U.S. government. If the people who wanted Spencer dead were the sort to actually reward their accomplices, then it was entirely possible that Nikita was living off quite handsomely in some tropical island somewhere.   

At the back of a study was a second door. Alexandra excused herself, giving no reason, and disappeared through it, leaving them under her assistant’s supervision. As they waited for the younger woman to do what she needed—consult others? Stall? Order her guards to deal with the intruders?—Rachel’s attention turned towards Sonya, whom she could tell was paying just as much attention to them. She considered again how the two women might have met, and what context would explain their incongruous relationship. Had Valentine been part of the Zetrov staff before Alexandra’s return? Plausible, but it didn’t explain her new employer’s trust in her. Had they been childhood friends? Unlikely, given the apparent age difference and Sonya’s accent. Had they met during Alexandra’s time on the streets, and elevated with her? Whatever the answer, it was key, Rachel felt, to answering the riddles that surrounded Alexandra herself. Too bad striking up a conversation with the assistant felt impossible; Rachel attempted it anyway, only to be met with noncommittal and monosyllabic answers.  

After some five minutes, Alexandra returned to the study, her bearing giving no indication of what had transpired. She took her seat and once again addressed her guests. “Ok, so let’s say, hypothetically, that I do have a relationship with Nikita,” she said. “Let’s say, hypothetically, that I want to help her, and that I believe you. I still wouldn’t be able to help you, hypothetically.”

“Why not?” Sydney asked.

“Because I have no idea where Nikita is.”

 _Goddammit_.

\----

Sydney usually had little trouble with cars.  Whether it was a Hruck Bugbear or an M1 Abrams, it never took long for her to feel at ease behind the wheel.  Similarly, the rented SUV she now drove had given her no trouble on the way to the mansion.  Now, as they exited Pinksy Forest and the treeline gave way to open road, she was finding the vehicle suffocating. Only one more hour to go before they arrived at Katya’s, thankfully. 

It wasn’t that their interview had gone badly. They’d learned nothing concrete or certain, but they’d built a bridge to Udinov, and as precarious and prone to combustion as it was, it was nevertheless victory enough. What’s more, they’d all but confirmed the Nikita / Udinov connection, even if it wasn’t one they could in any way prove existed. The problem had been Alexandra herself. Irrespective of her actual role in all this, interacting with her had brought to the surface ideas that she thought she’d come to terms with. But no, she was not going to deal with that until she was ready to deal with it. 

Rachel, perhaps sensing her unease, had remained mostly silent so far, and had refrained from her usual attempts at immediate analysis of the encounter. After fiddling with the car tuner almost to the point of insufferableness, she’d finally settled on a station specializing in European pop, and appeared content to lean against her door and look at the scenery, occasionally humming to the music. Sydney found herself attempting to mentally translate song lyrics into English, to defend against more substantial thinking. 

It wasn’t meant to last, however. Rachel, perhaps out of her own sense of restlessness, eventually returned to the tuner, shifting stations before then turning the radio off altogether. Sydney mentally braced herself. “Everything alright?” the younger spy asked. Not accusingly, but with familiar and comforting concern.

 “Yeah, sure. It’s just…Alexandra. She reminded me of my parents. A lot.”

Going into the meeting, she had anticipated that Alexandra had the potential to be difficult. She had not expected to feel that familiar sensation that had characterized those first few fraught interactions with her mother, of fording a deep, aggressive river that shifted between concern, amiability, aggression, and vulnerability with far too much ease threatened to send her crashing against the rocks at every opportunity. It had been Alexandra’s similarities to her father, though, than concerned her more.

“Well, if you want to talk about it,” Rachel said, with a small, encouraging smile. She turned away and resumed her staring, although she did not, Sydney noticed, turn the radio back up. 

Sydney exited their current road, and into the M10 to Moscow, slowing down as they met traffic, as bad as anything L.A. could offer. Sydney tripled her estimated travel time and took a breath; no sense in further avoiding the inevitable conversation, if they were going to be stuck here. But where to begin?

Specifics. 

“You know, talking to Alexandra about the Lazarey thing…it got me thinking.”

“Mission or personal?” Something in her expression must have given her away, because Rachel then tacked a hasty “Or both?” 

“Both, I think—more personal,” Sydney admitted. I was thinking about all the different things dad did to protect me back then—he even broke me out of military prison.” And that was far from the most questionable thing he’d done during that time. In the aftermath of her return from her years-long absence, her father had fabricated evidence, murdered witnesses, and put his entire livelihood on the line for her, all because of a murder she, evidence indicated, had definitely committed. 

“That sounds like Jack,” Rachel opined diplomatically.

“The thing is—and I hadn’t quite figured this out back then—I know he would have done the same thing no matter what. I could have killed the president, and dad would have still been all about hiding the evidence and helping me escape. Not because of some sense of justice, or fairness, or even because he thought I was innocent, but because it was me. He’d have burned the world down, for me.” It was at the root of the best and worst parts of him, which wasn’t something she had always appreciated, or understood.

“Is that what you think is happening, with Alexandra and Nikita?”

“Maybe. I’m thinking more about us, though.”

A beat passed before Rachel replied. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, are we doing the right thing? Part of me thinks we are—that if we aren’t the ones to find Nikita, then she’ll end up dead or in a deep hole somewhere, for something she may not have done.” If it could happen to her, with all her ties to the Intelligence community, it could very well happen to Nikita, a convicted murderer with no connections to anyone. And given circumstances, it wouldn’t take a Robert Lindsey to bring Nikita’s life to an end; it could just as likely be a random agent deciding to play Jack Ruby. 

“But…” Rachel encouraged.

“But part of me also wonders if we’d be doing this at all if Nikita weren’t someone who’d helped us out before. Like we’re gaming the system.” Lindsey may have been an odious shitstain of a man, but he wasn’t wrong to pursue her; losing her memory of killing Lazarey didn’t make him any less dead, or killing him any less of a crime. In the years since then, she sometimes wondered what would have happened if she’d discovered that she’d indeed killed the diplomat in cold blood, willingly and with premeditation. Would she have turned herself in and left her fate in the hands of the justice system? Her father wouldn’t have allowed it, but what if that hadn’t been a factor? She had never found an answer that pleased her. 

“Wasn’t that why A.P.O. existed in the first place?” Rachel asked. “To ignore the system?”

“Yeah. And god knows I was happy enough about it then. Now, though, with Izzy and Jack—I don’t like the idea of telling them one thing, and doing another.  That’s what dad used to do.” As much as the relationship between them had warmed, before the end, raising children of her own had also been a reminder of all the ways he had hurt her, and how he was almost certainly not, in the end, a good person.  She loved him, undoubtedly. But that didn’t mean she wanted to be like him. It was one of the few areas about which she and he would always be in complete agreement.  

“So what. Do you want to quit? We can, if you want. I can continue on my own.”

It was not, Sydney knew, an idle offer. It also came with no strings attached—she could say yes and absolutely nothing would change between the two. “No, not really. I still want to see this through to the end. It’s just…it’s complicated.  ”

As the cars in front of her moved forward a handful of feet before once again stopping, Sydney followed their lead. Rachel remained silent, and Sydney wondered if her friend was thinking about her own child. “Can I say something?” the she eventually asked.

“Go ahead,” Sydney answered, trying not to smile. Seven years they’d been friends, and Rachel could still be, at times, astoundingly reverential. It didn’t annoy Sydney—it was actually quite endearing—but you’d think she’d have learned by now that yes, she could always say something.

“What has Dixon told you about what we do? Me and him?”

“Not a lot. I haven’t asked. Counter-terrorism, based on intel from something called Research. He didn’t say much, but he made it sound like an upgraded version of Echelon,” put like that, it sounded like considerably more than “not a lot”. Still, as she’d been reminded multiple times, you could know quite a lot about something and still not know anything. 

Indeed, given Rachel’s expression, that seemed to be the case here. “That’s…one way of putting it.”

Sydney felt her grip on the steering wheel tighten. “How would you put it?”

“Well, did you ever watch _Minority Report_?”

Over the next few minutes, Rachel haltingly explained the ins and outs of Northern Lights and the honest-to-god artificial super-intelligence that analyzed ridiculous amounts of surveillance data and alerted, with an apparent 100% accuracy rate, about imminent terrorist threats.  It wasn’t completely and utterly unbelievable, but only really because Rambaldi had long since become part of Sydney’s vocabulary; even then, it was still a lot. 

 “Wait, so how did Spencer die, then?” Sydney asked, once the explanation was over. If the system couldn’t protect the President of the United States, then perhaps it was fatally misconceived. Part of her very much hoped that was the case. The alternative was…concerning.

“We have no idea,” Rachel admitted, uneasily. “That’s partly why finding Nikita’s so important.”

“That’s…not great,” was all Sydney could say.

While Sydney had always been faintly aware of the way the government tracked everything she did, the fact that it was a vital element of her day-to-day job ironically helped make that factor less terrifying. Not only did she know how to frustrate surveillance and protect her privacy, she had learned not to expect it in the first place, which meant it couldn’t be taken away. 

This was different.

While she had seen enough people assassinated to appreciate the appeal of something that could have helped save them, Sydney also felt certain that the system Rachel described was something that shouldn’t exist.  That it was the U.S. who was in control of this system did not at all make things better. 

Her discomfort, it seemed, had been obvious. Or maybe it’s just how everyone reacted, when told about the system.  “It’s actually really cool, when you get into it,” Rachel said, making Sydney think, for a moment, of Marshall. “But anyway, it’s because of the other part that I’m telling you this.”

Meaning the part where the way Northern Lights dealt with the terrorists threats was via extrajudicial assassinations. And of course, it would have to be assassination. Extrajudicial imprisonment wouldn’t work in the long term—all those terrorists would be noticed, eventually, items on a ledger that would need to be accounted for, and subcontracting the job carried multiple risks. Actually attempting to use the justice system was impossible, without revealing the source of Northern Light’s information—parallel construction could only take one so far. And simply telling people that they were not only being spied on, but that they were actually being paid attention to, was a non-starter.

“Does it bother you?” The concern behind her words reminded her how they’d been talking about something entirely different only a few minutes ago; if nothing else, Rachel’s confession had caused her own uncertainty to dissipate some, at least for the moment.

Now, though, it had been replaced by utter sadness for her partner.

Rachel had had no taste for killing, once. Sydney couldn’t even imagine how her friend had been able to carry out assassinations for years, and to do so without giving any sort of indication that she was doing so, at that. And while part of her wondered why she didn’t just quit—somebody else could do the job for her—this was clearly not something her friend needed to be rescued from. She’d made her choice, and she had clearly accepted it. While she was now speaking apprehensively about the whole thing, hers was not the tone of someone ready to leave. 

 “It comes and goes,” Rachel admitted. “It used to bother me a lot, when I first started. Other times, though, I decide that I’m okay with it. I mean, it’s not like we’re killing innocents—the numbers always pan out—did pan out.  And hell, what we do is better than risking the next 9/11, or drone strikes. And it’s very fair, in its way. Numbers get bullets—no exceptions. That’s the rule.”   _Ah, so that’s why she brought it up._

“After all this, though? Yeah, none of that seems particularly convincing,” Rachel continued. “It’s why I’m actually really grateful for this mission. I mean, the circumstances suck, and I get what you’re saying about working the system, but even so, I’m just really glad that it’s our choice, for once.”

Rachel was right: there was a certain sort of fairness to a system that didn’t allow exceptions. Her mind returned, for the first time in years, to that moment in Sloane’s office when she’d accused him of killing Danny. Of course he had, he’d admitted. He’d had no choice, he’d claimed; waiving the rules could only invite disaster. 

As she had instinctively known back then, in ways she was only able to vocalize later, Sloane’s decision had had nothing to do fairness. There was no fairness in killing civilians just for knowing the wrong thing.  What Sloane had been referring to as fairness had simply been a lack of discrimination, which was not the same thing. It was thoughtlessness, automatic action, instead of concern for all the people. 

Perhaps the thing that bothered her now wasn’t that Nikita was being given the benefit of the doubt, but that nobody else would have obtained it in her place.  

“Thank you,” Sydney said. “That helps.”

“Any time,” Rachel replied. And unlike anything said by Sloane, her father, mother, or Alexandra, Sydney could believe it, effortlessly.   

The drive continued. Another stolen glance at Rachel confirmed she had nothing else to say, and Sydney once again turned her full focus to the still-impassable road. There was still loads on Sydney’s mind, about Alexandra and her parents, but the car now felt nowhere near as stifling as it had been. Eventually, Rachel turned the radio back up, and Sydney actually found herself getting into the music for its own sake. Traffic jam permitting, they’d arrive at Moscow soon.  

\----

Rachel had just been in the middle of an eventful dream featuring herself, Meena, and a list of endless files to be sorted, when she heard a knock on her door. 

“Rachel, can I come in?”

“Just a moment!” after regaining a sense of location—Katya’s place, second guest room, no apparent immediate danger, no sunlight to be seen through the window—Rachel jumped out bed and opened the door for Sydney.

“We got something,” Sydney said, holding up the companion phone to the one they’d left with Alexandra. She looked, despite the early morning hour, not at all tired. Frenzied, was more like it.

Rachel took the cell phone and called up the text messages. At the tail end of their meeting, they’d urged Alexandra to contact them if she changed her mind about helping; Rachel hadn’t been terribly confident about the chances of that happening, but indeed, they’d received one two minutes earlier.  Notably, the message did not come from the phone they’d given Alexandra, but rather and unknown—and probably untraceable—number. 

_Bellfar Systems._

“Do you have any idea what that is?” Sydney asked.

“No, but we can find out.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Chapter Fourteen: "Sameen," Part I  
> She'd be making a lot more progress finding Nikita if Finch didn't keep calling with new numbers.  
> \----  
> Special thanks to **the-neurotic-zen-master** for their efforts in beta reading this chapter and last. 
> 
> Bellfar Systems may be familiar to _Nikita_ viewers; it is a front company used by the people who orchestrated the president's assassination. 
> 
> With this, the part of the story dealing with _Alias_ characters and concepts is over. We'll see Sydney and others again in the epilogue, but until then, that's it. That epilogue, by the way, will come after the upcoming Shaw two-parter. While this means leaving the investigation story ends at an odd place, this fic was never meant to be a complete narrative with a beginning, middle, and end; _Nikita_ canon has already taken care of the first and last of those. 
> 
> I've deleted the previous interlude because it was almost entirely expository, and this chapter ended up making it redundant.


End file.
